"Because there is no chance of any opposition. Flanker will not resign until February. I have had a little talk with him, and made that square. The oddest part of all is, that I had the hardest work to get out my own warming-pan. The others have behaved like gentlemen. There will be six of us, with the three who still remain. All staunch fellows, and not a fool among them, unless it is your humble servant. Come, and have a game of pyramids, friend Tommy." Very often, when I thought about Sir Roland Twentifold, I could not help feeling surprised at his devotion to that dryest and dullest of all games, at least in my opinion--politics. He was fond of field-sports, a bold rider, a good shot, a great lover of dogs, and of outdoor life, and a hater of town-existence. Yet all these were only light pleasures to him; while politics, and the strife of parties, seemed to be his passion. Handsome as he was, and a fine young man, with a rent-roll even finer, and therefore at a high demand in the London market, he passed among all the fair snares, uncaught, with a pleasant smile justly distributed. I ventured to ask Lady Twentifold once, how she, (so free from prejudice, and so full of good-will to the world at large) could have brought up her son, with such set convictions, and principles, perfectly upright, but sometimes almost too unbending. She looked up, with a kind but rather melancholy smile, from the paper, on which she was making a pencil-sketch of a very grand oak-tree, still in its prime, but as rugged as a ruin. "Who brought up this tree?" she asked. "Nature does everything now," I replied; "it used to be the Lord; but it is Nature now. In a few years more, it will be Science. When we tire of that, it will be Accident. And after that, Something even nobler." "But the tree will be the tree;" she answered gently, for her fear about me was that I might grow too scientific, if led into arguments against it; "I prefer to say, that the Almighty made it so, though few ladies now would agree with me. My dear Tommy, I have no more to do with the bent of Roly's mind, than I have with the twists, and turns, of this tree. He inherits it all from his grandfather; upon, I suppose, what the learned people call, the system of alternation. My dear husband, Roland's father, would never go near Westminster; although we had a house in London then, to see our friends in the season. He sat for Twentibury, in his own chair, or in the saddle, according to the season; and everything went on as nicely as could be. But his father had been of an uncomfortable nature, desiring to make speeches, and to meddle generally, his grandfather having been a strong Jacobite; and the whole of it comes out again in my Roly." CHAPTER XXXIX. FOR PUBLIC AND PRIVATE BENEFIT.