“I cannot think enough of the Providence that has made good come out of evil,” said Jane.  “But with regard to the rappings, Mr. Dempster, the oracular sentences that all would be well in the end, and that Francis should be happy after a time, were of the vaguest description, while on positive matters they were decidedly misinformed.”

“It might have been a lying or mocking spirit,” said Mr. Dempster; “my faith in the truth of these manifestations is not to be shaken by what you say.”

“I wonder if your spirits could tell us if Grant is in for-----, and
his majority?  The election must have taken place, but no one in the
room knows of it; that would be a crucial test, as Jane calls it,” said
Brandon.

“In such a company of unbelievers,” said Mr. Dempster, “we could not get up a seance, and what is more, we have no medium.”

“It is well that Grant goes out of his own district,” said Brandon, “for he would not stand a chance there; and now he is promising to those strangers anything and everything.  With all Grant’s aristocratic feelings, and his wife’s too, which are still stronger, their desire that he should have a seat in the Assembly, now that McIntyre is in, seems to drag him into as low depths as any one.  I cannot see why they should be so anxious about it, unless it is that, since they cannot afford to go home, they want to take as good a position here as any of their neighbours.  Grant’s affairs will suffer if he has to be so much in Melbourne, and at best he will make a very fourth-rate legislator.”

“I think he is naturally ‘indifferent honest,’” said Francis.  “At least, he is disposed to be honest, but canvassing is very different work here as well as in Britain.”

“You should really get into our Assembly, Frank,” said Brandon, “to give the natives here the benefit of your experience.  How great you would be on a point of order or a question of privilege!”

“I wish Francis had time to give to parliamentary duties,” said Jane. 
“I live in hopes that when Mr. ----- returns, he may try his
fortune in the political world here.  If representative assemblies would
limit themselves to what really concerns such bodies, it would not be
so heavy a tax upon people in business to give their time to the
public; but they will meddle with things that ought to be let alone,
and endless floods of talk on such matters take up much valuable time.”

“Then Mr. Hogarth’s public spirit has not been gently smothered by a happy marriage and a fine family of children?  That is the modern view of the case,” said Mr. Dempster.  “Nothing great is done by married men, unless they are unhappily mated.”

“A most ignoble view of a wife’s duties,” said Jane.

“My wife would never smother any public spirit I may have,” said Francis.  “She had too much to do with the birth of it, not to cherish it as fondly as any of her other babies; but I fear that, till my friend Mr. Hare’s scheme is carried, I could not get a majority in Victoria.  We want the reform very much here, and in all the colonies; and as yet, it has been failure, failure, failure.”