’The dun he fled like a stag of ten, but the mare like a
       barren doe.’

“Well, that’s how it was:  ‘Like a barren doe,’ I give you my word.”

“My dear Sally!”

“Shameless, was it?  My dear Elphinstone, you’ve only to bill it, and I’ll do Lady Godiva for ’em next year—­at my time of life.  But if you don’t like Kipling, what do you say to this?”

   ’For really this was a remarkable Ham,
    A twenty-pound solid Imperial Ham,
     And old Mrs. Liddicott
     Tucked up her petticoat—­’

“Which reminds me that the crowd specially cheered my white Balbriggans.  They are out of date, but I could never fancy my legs in anything but white.”

“What on earth are you reading?”

“The local paper—­Opposition.  Haven’t you seen it?  There’s a whole column in verse about you, Elphinstone; hits you off to a hair, and none so badly written.  I’d a mind to show it to the Countess and Lady Mary, but slipped it under the table cloth and at the last moment forgot it in your eloquence.  You really must listen—­”

   ’Sir Elphinstone Breward
    He rang for his steward,
     And “Damme,” said he, looking up from his letters,
    This side of the county
    That feeds on my bounty
     ‘s forgotten all proper respect of its betters.’

“The devil!” interrupted Sir Elphinstone.  “It’s that dirty little Radical, Wrightson.”

“You recognise the style?  It gets neater, to my thinking, as it goes on—­”

    ’Agitators and pillagers
    Stir up my villagers—­
      Worst of those fellows, so easily led! 
    Some haven’t food enough,
    Else it ain’t good enough,
      Others object to sleep three in a bed.’

    ’Deuce take their gratitude! 
    “Life”—­that’s the attitude—­
     “Dullish and hard, on the parish half-crown!”
    Dull?  Give ’em circuses! 
    Hard?  Ain’t there work’uses? 
     What can they see to attract ’em to town?’

“—­Neat, in its way,” commented Miss Sally, pausing.

“Neat? I call it subversive and damnable!”

“Listen!  The next is a stinger—­”

   ’Something quite recent, now: 
    “Drainage ain’t decent,” now: 
     Damme, when was it?  I’ve known, if you please,
    Old tenants, better ones,
    Crimean veterans—­
     Never heard they required w.c.’s—­’

“My dear Sally!”

“I read you the thing as it’s printed,” said Miss Sally, with another liquid chuckle.

["Ain’t it just ’eavingly?” whispered Tilda below, clutching the boy’s arm while she listened.

“What?”

“The voice of ’er.  If I could on’y speak words that way!”]

“He goes on,” pursued Miss Sally, “to tell how you and Saunders—­that’s your new bailiff’s name, is it not?—­cooked up this woman’s race between you as a step towards saving the Empire.  The language is ribald in places, I allow; but I shouldn’t greatly wonder if that, more or less, is how it happened.  And any way I’ve come to the rescue, and kept the Imperial Ham in the family.”