"I don't think Heron's address reads half badly," Mr. Money said, one evening in the absence of Heron, to his two companions; "on the whole, I shouldn't wonder if it took some people, the women particularly. Anything personal, anything in the nature of a grievance, is likely to have a good effect on many people, especially where the injured personage is young, and good-looking, and plucky. I wish the women had the votes here just for this once, for I think we should stand to win if they had." "Then, papa, do you think we shan't win now?" Lucy asked. Minola looked up eagerly for his answer. "Well, Lucelet, I don't like to say; I am not quite charmed with the look of things. I find there are a good many very strong Radicals grown up in this place since there was a contest here before; and Heron's not wild enough for them by half. They are a little of the red-hot social-revolution sort of thing--the _proletaire_ business, with a dash of the brabbling atheist--the fellows who think one is not fit to live if he even admits the possibility of another world. I am afraid these fellows will hold aloof from us altogether, or even take some whim of voting against us, and they may be strong enough to turn the scale." Minola hoped that if her friend Mr. St. Paul had really any charm by which to extort victory for Heron as he had promised, he would not forget to use it in good time. But she began to have less faith, and less, in the possibility of any such feat. She was a little in the perplexed condition of some one of mediaeval times, who has entered into a bargain for supernatural interference, and is not quite certain whether to wish that the compact may be really carried out or that it may prove to have been only the figment of a dream. "I'm told we ought to have some poems done," Money went on to say. "Not merely squibs, you know, but appeals about right and justice, and the cause of oppressed humanity, and all that." "I'm sure Minola could do some beautifully!" Lucy exclaimed, looking beseechingly toward her friend. "Oh, no; I couldn't indeed! My appeals would be dreadfully weak; they could not rouse the spirits of any mortal creature. Now, if we only had Mary Blanchet!" This, it must be owned, was Minola's fun, but it gave an idea to Mr. Money. "Tell you what," he said; "we ought to have her brother--the bard you used to call him, Lucelet." "Oh, no, papa; indeed I never called him anything of the kind. I never did, indeed, Nola." "Well, whatever you called him, Lucelet, we can't do better than to have him. We'll put Pegasus into harness, by Jove--a capital good use to make of him too. I'll write to what's-his-name?--Blanchet--at once." "But I don't think he would like it, papa; I think he would take offence at the idea of your asking him to do poems for an election. I don't think he would come."