“We must slip out quietly, or my mother ’ll collar us. Keep your eye on me, and hook it when we near the door. I’ll pilot you.” The manœuver was executed. “Take that chair; you can lose yourself in it. Try this smoke. Seltzer or soda. Mix your own liquor. Ain’t this a cozy little hole? This is my hermitage. What were you thinking of when I spoke to you? You looked miles away.” “So I was. I was wondering, I think, whether I’d rather be a Lifeguardsman or a power-loom weaver, and contrasting that six feet two of quintessential boredom, Captain Bouverie, I think his name is, with a shuttle-thrower of my native valley.” “Ah! yes. You’re Yorkshire, aren’t you? Any relation of Beaumont, of White Meadows? I met him once at Baden.” “I can’t say I am and I can’t say I’m not. I’ve heard my mother say there’s some distant connection, but it is of the remotest. If we are of the same blood, it’s about run itself out by this time.” “But you know Beaumont, of White Meadows. Plunges a lot at the tables, they say. Great friend of the Prince.” “So I have heard. But I don’t know much about him. I’ve spoken once or twice on the same platform and probably shall again.” “Beaumont’s a Liberal, isn’t he? Then you’re a Liberal, too. I’m glad of that. I’m to go into the House at the next Election. I suppose we’ll all have to talk extension of the suffrage to the counties?” “That won’t be a very difficult matter in my district. I pity the poor devil of a candidate who has to address a lot of unenfranchised weavers and tell them they’re not fit to have the franchise enjoyed by their mates who work in the same shed, but happen to live the other side of an inky stream you could hop over, but that divides the county from the borough. It’s preposterous!” “Of course it is. But how do your manufacturers like the idea?” “Like it! Why shouldn’t they like it? If they don’t they’ll have to lump it, that’s all. It’s sure to come. If not from Gladstone then from Salisbury.” “Do you know, Beaumont, I never saw a weaver in my life, not to talk to, that is. I should awfully like to.” “Well, come up to Yorkshire. I’ll take you the round of the mills. But if you want to see the genuine article you must drop the Lord and come as plain Lindsay. They’ll think you’re home spun. We make lindseys our way.” “Do you mean the hands would fawn? I shouldn’t like that.” “No, they wouldn’t fawn. But you’d be seized on by the masters. They’d ‘my lord’ up hill and down dale. The ‘hands’ would try to equalise matters by being as unapproachable as they knew how, and that’s saying something I can tell you.” “But I should like that.” “I don’t think you would. But, anyway, you wouldn’t see them just as they are. To do that plain Lindsay’s the ticket.” “Our farmers don’t take half kindly to enfranchising Hodge.”