"I'm glad you think so, very glad. Now here is Atheling and Belward meadows and corn-fields. We can raise our wheat and cattle and wool, and carry on our farms--you and I together, for I could not do without you; and if I do right by you is there any reason to want better than right? And if I do not do right, then shout 'Reform,' and come and tell me what you want, and we will pass our own Reform Bill. Will that suit you?" And they answered him with cheers, and he sent them into the Atheling Arms for a good dinner, and then rode slowly home. But a great sadness came over him, and he said to himself: "It is not capital; it is not labour; it is not land: it is a bit of human kindness and human relations that lie at the root of all Reform. Maude says true enough, that we don't know the people, and don't feel for them, and don't care for them. A word of reason, a word of truth and trust and of mutual good-will, and how pleased them poor fellows were! Reform has nothing on earth to do with Toryism or Whigism. God bless my soul! what kind of a head must the man have that could think so? _I begin to see_--_I begin to see!_" CHAPTER FIFTEENTH LADY OF EXHAM HALL AT LAST The three weeks' recess was full of grave anxiety; and the Squire had many fears they were to be the last weeks of peace and home before civil war called him to fulfil the promise he had made to his working-men. The Birmingham Political Union declared that if there was any further delay after Easter, two hundred thousand men would go forth from their shops and forges, and encamp in the London squares, till they knew the reason why the Reform Bill was not passed. The Scots Greys, who were quartered at Birmingham, had been employed the previous Sabbath in grinding their swords; and it was asserted that the Duke of Wellington stood pledged to the Government to quiet the country in ten days. These facts sufficiently indicated to the Squire the temper of the people; and he set himself, as far as he could, to take all the sweetness out of his home life possible. The memory of it might have to comfort him for many days. With his daughter always by his side, he rode up and down the lands he loved; unconsciously giving directions that might be serviceable if he had to go to a stormier field than the House of Commons. To Mrs. Atheling he hardly suggested the possibility; for if he did, she always answered cheerfully, "Nonsense, John! The Bill _will_ pass; and if it does not pass, Englishmen have more sense than they had in the days of Cromwell. They aren't going to kill one another for an Act of Parliament." But to Kate, as they rode and walked, he could worry and grumble comfortably. She was always ready to sympathise with his fears, and to encourage and suggest any possible hope of peace and better days. To see her bright face answering his every thought filled the father's heart with a joy that was complete.