But Sam did not see himself in the character of an industrious volunteer, and he was silent for two reasons. The first was that his silence was causing Mr. Wattercouch visible embarrassment, and Sam liked the other man to be embarrassed; the second was that he was considering how to make Mr. Wattercouch see that his suggestion was an absurdity, if not an insult. He smiled with quite polite superiority. “But I think, Mr. Wattercouch, that you are making a mistake,” he said, as one who apologizes for having to be blunt. “Well,” admitted Wattercouch, “I had my doubts, because I fancied I’d heard you support Stephen Verity at the Concentrics.” “That,” said Sam, “is not the mistake to which I allude. I am aware that I have supported Verity at the Concentrics. And I am aware that the way to learn how to cut a man’s hair is to practise on a sheep’s head. Verity was my sheep’s head.” “I’m afraid I hardly follow,” said Wattercouch, who was indeed rather scandalized by such an allusion to Mr. Verity, who, if a Conservative, was an alderman and a noted figure in local politics. “I will make it easier for you by admitting that even I had to learn,” said Sam. “Ah! I see. You have now seen the error of your ways. You realize the grandeur of Liberalism, the----” “I always did,” Sam asserted. “When I supported Verity, I was teaching myself to speak. I was practising on Toryism that I might become perfect in Liberalism. Those days when I made a convenience of Toryism were the days of my apprenticeship to the art of speaking. Would you have had me speak badly for such a cause as Liberalism? No. But if I spoke badly for Toryism, I damaged nothing. Toryism _is_ nothing unless, as I said, it is a sheep’s head for Liberals to practise on when they are novices, and the mistake you made is to suppose that I am still a novice, when, as a matter of fact----” He paused elaborately and hoped that Mr. Wattercouch would fill in the blank intelligently. “But it is premature to speak of that,” he said. “As to the registration, I can send you one of my clerks.” He made a gesture dismissing as an affair of pygmies that chief event of an agent’s year. “I see... I see,” said Wattercouch, trying hard to believe that he had so far been looking at Sam through the wrong end of a telescope. “And you yourself, Mr. Branstone?” It tempted Sam, that tone of quite startled respect which Wattercouch adopted now. The misfortune of Sam’s imaginative flights was that he never knew when to stop. All that he cared about, at the moment, was to give Wattercouch the impression that Sam Branstone was too important to be asked to drudge at registration work. He was in no hurry about politics, but when he began it would not be as a volunteer clerk.