Mr. Dugdale walked in composedly through the sash-window, beaming around him a sort of general smile. He never attempted any individual greeting, and Agatha offering her hand, was met by his surprised but benevolent “Eh!” However, when required, he gave her a hearty grasp. After which, peering dreamily round the room, he pounced upon a queer-looking folio, and buried himself therein, making occasional remarks highly interesting of their kind, but slightly irrelevant to the conversation in general. Agatha amused herself with peeping at the title of the book--some abstruse work on mechanical science--and then watched the reader, thinking what great intellectual power there was in the head, and what acuteness in the eye. Also, he wore at times a wonderfully spiritual expression, strangely contrasting with the materiality of his daily existence. No one could see that look without feeling convinced that there were beautiful depths open only to Divinest vision, in the silent and abstracted nature of Marmaduke Dugdale. Nevertheless, he could be eminently practical now and then, especially in mechanics. “Nathanael, Nathanael! just look here. This is the very contrivance that would have suited Brian in his old clay-pits. See!” And he began talking in a style that was Greek itself to Agatha, but to which Nathanael, leaning over his chair-back, listened intelligently. It was very nice to see the liking between the two brothers-in-law--the young man so tender over the oddities of the elder one, who seemed such a strange mixture of the philosopher and the child. These were the sort of traits which continually turned Agatha's heart towards her husband. “Talking of clay-pits,” said Duke, with a gleam of recollection, “I've something for you here!” He drew out of the voluminous mass of papers that stuffed his pockets one more carelessly scrawled than the rest. “It's a plan of my own, for giving a little help to our own clay-cutters and to the stone-cutters in the Isle of Portland, who are shockingly off in the winter sometimes. Here's Trenchard's name down for a good sum--it will make him and Free-trade popular, you know.” And Mr. Dugdale smiled with the most amiable and innocent Machiavellianism. Nathanael shook his head mischievously, greatly to the amusement of his wife, who had stolen up to see what was going on, and stood hanging on his arm and peeping over at the illegible paper. “Excellent plan, Marmaduke--very long-headed. You give them Christmas dinners, and they give you--votes.” “Bless you, no! That would be bribery. We”--he reflected a minute--“Oh, we will only help those who have got no votes.” “Then the voters will all be against you.”