“I am sorry to have disturbed you so early,” he replied. “Not a bit, Commander Beauchamp, not a bit, sir. Early or late, and ay ready—with the Napiers; I’ll wash, I’ll wash.” “I came to speak to you of this article of yours on me. They tell me in the office that you are the writer. Pray don’t ‘Commander’ me so much.—It’s not customary, and I object to it.” “Certainly, certainly,” Timothy acquiesced. “And for the future, Mr. Turbot, please to be good enough not to allude in print to any of my performances here and there. Your intentions are complimentary, but it happens that I don’t like a public patting on the back.” “No, and that’s true,” said Timothy. His appreciative and sympathetic agreement with these sharp strictures on the article brought Beauchamp to a stop. Timothy waited for him; then, smoothing his prickly cheek, remarked: “If I’d guessed your errand, Commander Beauchamp, I’d have called in the barber before I came down, just to make myself decent for a “first introduction.” Beauchamp was not insensible to the slyness of the poke at him. “You see, I come to the borough unknown to it, and as quietly as possible, and I want to be taken as a politician,” he continued, for the sake of showing that he had sufficient to say to account for his hasty and peremptory summons of the writer of that article to his presence. “It’s excessively disagreeable to have one’s family lugged into notice in a newspaper—especially if they are of different politics. _I_ feel it.” “All would, sir,” said Timothy. “Then why the deuce did you do it?” Timothy drew a lading of air into his lungs. “Politics, Commander Beauchamp, involves the doing of lots of disagreeable things to ourselves and our relations; it’s positive. I’m a soldier of the Great Campaign: and who knows it better than I, sir? It’s climbing the greasy pole for the leg o’ mutton, that makes the mother’s heart ache for the jacket and the nether garments she mended neatly, if she didn’t make them. Mutton or no mutton, there’s grease for certain! Since it’s sure we can’t be disconnected from the family, the trick is to turn the misfortune to a profit; and allow me the observation, that an old family, sir, and a high and titled family, is not to be despised for a background of a portrait in naval uniform, with medal and clasps, and some small smoke of powder clearing off over there:—that’s if we’re to act sagaciously in introducing an unknown candidate to a borough that has a sneaking liking for the kind of person, more honour to it. I’m a political veteran, sir; I speak from experience. We must employ our weapons, every one of them, and all off the grindstone.” “Very well,” said Beauchamp. “Now understand; you are not in future to employ the weapons, as you call them, that I have objected to.” Timothy gaped slightly.