“Why, somebody said to him the other day, ‘How is it you never take your seat on the Borough Bench when you’re in town?’ _‘Pas si bete,’_ replied Leatham; ‘every time I fine a man or send one down I make at least one enemy, and they count at elections.’ So it is with your informal spouting, Beaumont. You make a lot of admirers, perhaps, among a lot of greasy, dirty, unwashed mill-hands, who shout themselves hoarse about a policy they don’t understand, and they bring you a dirty, greasy guinea or so if they get into trouble with an equally dirty, greasy mill-girl. But who prepares the conveyances and mortgages and settlements for the big-pots? We don’t, anyhow. Why! Leatham himself takes his work to that sheaf of parchment skins, old Heatherington, who has consistently voted against him ever since he first contested the borough. Politics don’t pay, Beaumont, at least, not your sort.” “Ah! well, Sam, suppose we say I like ’em. I think they’re my only serious dissipation. You know I don’t go in much for beer and skittles, and am bored at a ballet. Supposing we call politics my little vice. You don’t want them all yourself, Sam.” Certainly no one could with justice accuse Sam Storth of having any enthusiasms political or otherwise. He called himself a Conservative, and plumed himself on his gentility, and had undoubtedly an uncle in holy orders, to whom, on occasion, he would casually allude. He chose his associates, so far as he could, among the _jeunesse doree_ of the wealthy manufacturers and merchants of the town, who patronised a Bond Street tailor—“can’t get a decent cut in the country, don’t you know,”—were much concerned about the fit of their boots and the colour of their ties and gloves; affected a languid drawl, crawled on the sunny side of New Street of a Saturday morning, found life a “doosid bore,” avoided a reference to the paternal mill or counting-house themselves, and thought any such reference by others uncommon bad form; held commissions in the Yeomanry or Volunteers and were rigorous in the use of their pseudo… military titles in season and out of season; had a club of their own, from which the retailer of the goods their fathers manufactured were jealously excluded; and, in a word, were as innocent a set of sucking young snobs, without knowing it, as one could well wish to encounter. As Storth had lived much in London before condescending upon Huddersfield, he was rather a favourite at this club, though he had to surmount a certain amount of prejudice arising from his connection with that low Radical chap, Beaumont.