“Wharton—­H.S.  Wharton.  His mother was a daughter of Lord Westgate, and her mother was an actress whom the old lord married in his dotage.  Lady Mildred Wharton was like Garrick, only natural when she was acting, which she did on every possible occasion.  A preposterous woman!  Old Wharton ought to have beaten her for her handwriting, and murdered her for her gowns.  Her signature took a sheet of note-paper, and as for her dress I never could get out of her way.  Whatever part of the room I happened to be in I always found my feet tangled in her skirts.  Somehow, I never could understand how she was able to find so much stuff of one pattern.  But it was only to make you notice her, like all the rest.  Every bit of her was a pose, and the maternal pose was the worst of all.”

“H.S.  Wharton?” said the other.  “Why, that’s the man who has been speaking here to-day.  I’ve just been reading the account of it in the Evening Star.  A big meeting—­called by a joint committee of the leading Birmingham trades to consider the Liberal election programme as it affects labour—­that’s the man—­he’s been at it hammer and tongs—­red-hot—­all the usual devices for harrying the employer out of existence, with a few trifles—­graduated income-tax and land nationalisation—­thrown in.  Oh! that’s the man, is it?—­they say he had a great reception—­spoke brilliantly—­and is certainly going to get into Parliament next week.”

The speaker, who had the air of a shrewd and prosperous manufacturer, put up his eyeglass to look at this young Robespierre.  His vis-a-vis—­a stout country gentleman who had been in the army and knocked about the world before coming into his estate—­shrugged his shoulders.

“So I hear—­he daren’t show his nose as a candidate in our part of the world, though of course he does us all the harm he can.  I remember a good story of his mother—­she quarrelled with her husband and all her relations, his and hers, and then she took to speaking in public, accompanied by her dear boy.  On one occasion she was speaking at a market town near us, and telling the farmers that as far as she was concerned she would like to see the big properties cut up to-morrow.  The sooner her father’s and husband’s estates were made into small holdings stocked with public capital the better.  After it was all over, a friend of mine, who was there, was coming home in a sort of omnibus that ran between the town and a neighbouring village.  He found himself between two fat farmers, and this was the conversation—­broad Lincolnshire, of course:  ‘Did tha hear Lady Mildred Wharton say them things, Willum?’ ‘Aye, a did.’  ‘What did tha think, Willum?’ ’What did tha think, George?’ ’Wal, aa thowt Laady Mildred Wharton wor a graaet fule, Willum, if tha asks me.’  ‘I’ll uphowd tha, George!  I’ll uphowd tha!’ said the other, and then they talked no more for the rest of the journey.”

The friend laughed.