’We are to be spared politics to-day?  I think politics and cookery do not assimilate.’

‘I’m afraid you won’t teach the true Briton to agree with you,’ said Melville, shaking his head over the sums involved by this British propensity.

‘No,’ said Seymour.  ‘Election dinners are a part of the Constitution’:  and Andrew laughed:  ’They make Radicals pay as well as Tories, so it’s pretty square.’

The topic was taken up, flagged, fell, and was taken up again.  And then Harry Jocelyn said: 

’I say, have you worked the flags yet?  The great Mel must have his flags.’

The flags were in the hands of ladies, and ladies would look to the rosettes, he was told.

Then a lady of the name of Barrington laughed lightly, and said: 

’Only, pray, my dear Harry, don’t call your uncle the “Great Mel” at the election.’

‘Oh! very well,’ quoth Harry:  ‘why not?’

’You ’ll get him laughed at—­that ‘s all.’

‘Oh! well, then, I won’t,’ said Harry, whose wits were attracted by the Countess’s visage.

Mrs. Barrington turned to Seymour, her neighbour, and resumed: 

’He really would be laughed at.  There was a tailor—­he was called the Great Mel—­and he tried to stand for Fallow field once.  I believe he had the support of Squire Uplift—­George’s uncle—­and others.  They must have done it for fun!  Of course he did not get so far as the hustings; but I believe he had flags, and principles, and all sorts of things worked ready.  He certainly canvassed.’

‘A tailor—­canvassed—­for Parliament?’ remarked an old Dowager, the mother of Squire Copping.  ‘My what are we coming to next?’

‘He deserved to get in,’ quoth Aunt Bel:  ’After having his principles worked ready, to eject the man was infamous.’

Amazed at the mine she had sprung, the Countess sat through it, lamenting the misery of owning a notorious father.  Happily Evan was absent, on his peaceful blessed bed!

Bowing over wine with the Duke, she tried another theme, while still, like a pertinacious cracker, the Great Mel kept banging up and down the table.

‘We are to have a feast in the open air, I hear.  What you call pic-nic.’

The Duke believed there was a project of the sort.

’How exquisitely they do those things in Portugal!  I suppose there would be no scandal in my telling something now.  At least we are out of Court-jurisdiction.’

‘Scandal of the Court!’ exclaimed his Grace, in mock horror.

’The option is yours to listen.  The Queen, when young, was sweetly pretty; a divine complexion; and a habit of smiling on everybody.  I presume that the young Habral, son of the first magistrate of Lisbon, was also smiled on.  Most innocently, I would swear!  But it operated on the wretched youth!  He spent all his fortune in the purchase and decoration of a fairy villa, bordering on the