“I hope not,” answered the Parson, doubtfully. “He’s a strange fellow. But I think you will be pleased with him; that is, if he can be found. Oh, Mr. Saunderson, how do you do? Have you seen your visitor?” “No, sir, I have just come. My mistress, Squire, and my three girls; and this is my son.” “A hearty welcome to all,” said the graceful Squire; (turning to Saunderson junior), “I suppose you are fond of dancing. Get yourself a partner. We may as well open the ball.” “Thank you, sir, but I never dance,” said Saunderson junior, with an air of austere superiority to an amusement which the March of Intellect had left behind. “Then you’ll have less to regret when you are grown old. But the band is striking up; we must adjourn to the marquee. George” (Mr. Belvoir, escaped from Mr. Steen, had just made his appearance), “will you give your arm to Cecilia, to whom I think you are engaged for the first quadrille?” “I hope,” said George to Cecilia, as they walked towards the marquee, “that Mr. Steen is not an average specimen of the electors I shall have to canvass. Whether he has been brought up to honour his own father and mother I can’t pretend to say, but he seems bent upon teaching me not to honour mine. Having taken away my father’s moral character upon the unfounded allegation that he loved rabbits better than mankind, he then assailed my innocent mother on the score of religion, and inquired when she was going over to the Church of Rome, basing that inquiry on the assertion that she had taken away her custom from a Protestant grocer and conferred it on a Papist.” “Those are favourable signs, Mr. Belvoir. Mr. Steen always prefaces a kindness by a great deal of incivility. I asked him once to lend me a pony, my own being suddenly taken lame, and he seized that opportunity to tell me that my father was an impostor in pretending to be a judge of cattle; that he was a tyrant, screwing his tenants in order to indulge extravagant habits of hospitality; and implied that it would be a great mercy if we did not live to apply to him, not for a pony, but for parochial relief. I went away indignant. But he sent me the pony. I am sure he will give you his vote.” “Meanwhile,” said George, with a timid attempt at gallantry, as they now commenced the quadrille, “I take encouragement from the belief that I have the good wishes of Miss Travers. If ladies had votes, as Mr. Mill recommends, why, then--” “Why, then, I should vote as Papa does,” said Miss Travers, simply. “And if women had votes, I suspect there would be very little peace in any household where they did not vote as the man at the head of it wished them.” “But I believe, after all,” said the aspirant to Parliament, seriously, “that the advocates for female suffrage would limit it to women independent of masculine control, widows and spinsters voting in right of their own independent tenements.”