Knowing the difficulty once afflicting Beauchamp in the art of speaking on politics tersely, Lydiard was rather astonished at his well-delivered cannonade; and he fancied that his modesty had been displaced by the new acquirement; not knowing the nervous fever of his friend’s condition, for which the rattle of speech was balm, and contention a native element, and the assumption of truth a necessity.  Beauchamp hugged his politics like some who show their love of the pleasures of life by taking to them angrily.  It was all he had:  he had given up all for it.  He forced Lydiard to lay down his pen and walk back to the square with him, and went on arguing, interjecting, sneering, thumping the old country, raising and oversetting her, treating her alternately like a disrespected grandmother, and like a woman anciently beloved; as a dead lump, and as a garden of seeds; reviewing prominent political men, laughing at the dwarf-giants; finally casting anchor on a Mechanics’ Institute that he had recently heard of, where working men met weekly for the purpose of reading the British poets.

‘That’s the best thing I’ve heard of late,’ he said, shaking Lydiard’s hand on the door-steps.

’Ah!  You’re Commander Beauchamp; I think I know you.  I’ve seen you on a platform,’ cried a fresh-faced man in decent clothes, halting on his way along the pavement; ’and if you were in your uniform, you damned Republican dog!  I’d strip you with my own hands, for the disloyal scoundrel you are, with your pimping Republicanism and capsizing everything in a country like Old England.  It’s the cat-o’-nine-tails you want, and the bosen to lay on; and I’d do it myself.  And mind me, when next I catch sight of you in blue and gold lace, I’ll compel you to show cause why you wear it, and prove your case, or else I’ll make a Cupid of you, and no joke about it.  I don’t pay money for a nincompoop to outrage my feelings of respect and loyalty, when he’s in my pay, d’ ye hear?  You’re in my pay:  and you do your duty, or I ’ll kick ye out of it.  It’s no empty threat.  You look out for your next public speech, if it’s anywhere within forty mile of London.  Get along.’

With a scowl, and a very ugly ‘yah!’ worthy of cannibal jaws, the man passed off.

Beauchamp kept eye on him.  ‘What class does a fellow like that come of?’

‘He’s a harmless enthusiast,’ said Lydiard.  ’He has been reading the article, and has got excited over it.’

‘I wish I had the fellow’s address.’  Beauchamp looked wistfully at Lydiard, but he did not stimulate the generous offer to obtain it for him.  Perhaps it was as well to forget the fellow.

‘You see the effect of those articles,’ he said.

‘You see what I mean by unseasonable times,’ Lydiard retorted.

‘He didn’t talk like a tradesman,’ Beauchamp mused.

‘He may be one, for all that.  It’s better to class him as an enthusiast.’

‘An enthusiast!’ Beauchamp stamped:  ‘for what?’