"Yes;--that's just it. But if it don't please?" "Why, then I'll go home again." "Just so;--but the people here ain't what they are at other places, Sir Thomas Underwood. I've seen many elections here, Sir Thomas." "No doubt you have, Mr. Pile." "Over a dozen;--haven't you, Mr. Pile?" said Trigger. "And carried on a deal better than they have been since you meddled with them," said Mr. Pile, turning upon Trigger. "They used to do the thing here as it should be done, and nobody wasn't extortionate, nor yet cross-grained. They're changing a deal about these things, I'm told; but they're changing all for the worse. They're talking of purity,--purity,--purity; and what does it all amount to? Men is getting greedier every day." "We mean to be pure at this election, Mr. Pile," said Sir Thomas. Mr. Pile looked him hard in the face. "At least I do, Mr. Pile. I can answer for myself." Mr. Pile turned away his face, and opened his mouth, and put his hand upon his stomach, and made a grimace, as though,--as though he were not quite as well as he might be. And such was the case with him. The idea of purity of election at Percy-cross did in truth make him feel very sick. It was an idea which he hated with his whole heart. There was to him something absolutely mean and ignoble in the idea of a man coming forward to represent a borough in Parliament without paying the regular fees. That somebody, somewhere, should make a noise about it,--somebody who was impalpable to him, in some place that was to him quite another world,--was intelligible. It might be all very well in Manchester and such-like disagreeable places. But that candidates should come down to Percycross and talk about purity there, was a thing abominable to him. He had nothing to get by bribery. To a certain extent he was willing to pay money in bribery himself. But that a stranger should come to the borough and want the seat without paying for it was to him so distasteful, that this assurance from the mouth of one of the candidates did make him very sick. "I think you'd better go back to London, Sir Thomas," said Mr. Pile, as soon as he recovered himself sufficiently to express his opinion. "You mean that my ideas as to standing won't suit the borough." "No, they won't, Sir Thomas. I don't suppose anybody else will tell you so,--but I'll do it. Why should, a poor man lose his day's wages for the sake of making you a Parliament man? What have you done for any of 'em?" "Half an hour would take a working man to the poll and back," argued Sir Thomas.