“You know perfectly well,” she would sigh, “that I would be a lost, lone woman without you.”

Whereat Paul would laugh his gay laugh.  At this period of his life he had not a care in the world.

The game of politics also fascinated him.  A year or so after he joined the Winwoods there was a General Election.  The Liberals, desiring to drive the old Tory from his lair, sent down a strong candidate to Morebury.  There was a fierce battle, into which Paul threw himself, heart and soul.  He discovered he could speak.  When he first found himself holding a couple of hundred villagers in the grip of his impassioned utterance he felt that the awakening of England had begun.  It was a delicious moment.  As a canvasser he performed prodigies of cajolery.  Extensive paper mills, a hotbed of raging Socialism, according to Colonel Winwood, defaced (in the Colonel’s eyes) the outskirts of the little town.

“They’re wrong ’uns to a man,” said the Colonel, despondently.

Paul came back from among them with a notebook full of promises.

“How did you manage it?” asked the Colonel.

“I think I got on to the poetical side of politics,” said Paul.

“What the deuce is that?”

Paul smiled.  “An appeal to the imagination,” said he.

When Colonel Winwood got in by an increased majority, in spite of the wave of Liberalism that spread over the land, he gave Paul a gold cigarette case; and thenceforward admitted him into his political confidence.  So Paul became familiar with the Lobby of the House of Commons and with the subjects before the Committees on which Colonel Winwood sat, and with the delicate arts of wire-pulling and intrigue, which appeared to him a monstrously fine diversion.  There was also the matter of Colonel Winwood’s speeches, which the methodical warrior wrote out laboriously beforehand and learned by heart.  They were sound, weighty pronouncements, to which the House listened with respect; but they lacked the flashes which lit enthusiasm.  One day he threw the bundle of typescript across to Paul.

“See what you think of that.”

Paul saw and made daring pencilled amendments, and took it to the Colonel.

“It’s all very funny,” said the latter, tugging his drooping moustache, “but I can’t say things like that in the House.”

“Why not?” asked Paul.

“If they heard me make an epigram, they would have a fit.”

“Our side wouldn’t.  The Government might.  The Government ought to have fits all the time until it expires in convulsions.”

“But this is a mere dull agricultural question.  The Board of Agriculture have brought it in, and it’s such pernicious nonsense that I, as a county gentleman, have to speak against it.”

“But couldn’t you stick in my little joke about the pigs?” asked Paul pleadingly.

“What’s that?” Colonel Winwood found the place in the script.  “I say that the danger of swine fever arising from this clause in the Bill will affect every farmer in England.”