'I just lifted her up and kissed her bonny face, and said I had room enough in my heart and home for her; and that she was gladly welcome, and would be much made of, and I don't know what else--plenty of things of the same sort. My word! Edgar was set up.' 'He may well be set up,' answered Mrs. Atheling; 'she is the richest and sweetest girl in England; and she thinks the sun rises and sets in Edgar Atheling. He ought to be set up with a wife like that.' 'He was, with her and me together. I don't know which of us seemed to please him most. Maude, they are coming down to Lord Ashley's on a visit, and I asked them _here_. I could not do any different, could I?' 'If you had you would have been a poor kind of a father. What did you say?' 'I said, when you are at Ashley Place come over to Atheling, and I gave Edgar my hand and looked at him; and he looked at me and clasped it tight, and said, "We will come.'" "That was right." "I am glad I have done right for once, Maude. Do you know that Ashley is one of the worst Radicals in the lot of them?" "Never mind, John. I have noticed that, as a general thing, the worse Radical, the better man; but a Tory cannot be trusted to give a Radical a character. The Tories are very like the poor cat who said, 'If she only had wings, she would gladly extirpate the whole race of those troublesome sparrows.'" "There are to be no more Tories now, we have got a new name. Lord John Russell called us 'Conservatives,' and we took to the word, and it is as like as not to stick to us. It will be Conservatives and Reformers in the future." "But you said the Reform Bill was lost." "I said it had not passed. What of that? The rascals have only been downed for this round; they will be up to time, when time is called June the twenty-first; and they will fight harder than ever." "How was the Bill lost? By obstructions?" "Yes; when it was ready to go into Committee, General Gascoigne moved that, 'The number of members returned to Parliament ought not to be diminished;' and when the House divided on this motion, Gascoigne's resolution had a majority of eight." "Then Grey's Ministry have retired?" said Mrs. Atheling, in alarm. "No, they have not; they should have done so by all decent precedents; but, instead of behaving like gentlemen, they resolved to appeal to the country. We sat all night quarrelling on this subject; but at five in the morning I was worn out with the stifling, roaring House, and sick with the smell of dying candles, and the reek and steam of quarrelling human beings, so I stepped out and took a few turns on Westminster Bridge. It was a dead-calm, lovely morning, and the sun was just rising over the trees of the Abbey and the Speaker's house, and I had a bit of heart-longing for Atheling." "Why did you not run away to Atheling, Father?"