"Now, I am off for the _Towers_," I said to Sir Roland, only two days before the one fixed for the poll; "I can't stand any more of this, and Bill cannot want me any longer. I have had the very kindest letters from your mother; and if you prefer racket to home-life, I don't. I will meet you in London, any day you may appoint. But I must have a little quiet first. 'Tis as bad as a boat-race every day; and at Henley once I lost my nerve, from too much of it, and we got whacked." "I see;" he replied, as he was fond of doing. "Another man's laurels, wreathed with orange-blossom, are hard to behold philosophically. Go, Tommy, go and recruit your roses. But remember our compact. You have won nothing yet." He might say what he pleased, when he smiled like Laura; though his smile was strength, and hers was sweetness. That evening, I arrived where I was welcome; and the lovely blush, and soft whisper of a kiss, were worth a world of politics, and Parliament. The privilege of changing their minds has always been handsomely yielded to fair ladies; so long as they do not change there with their precious hearts, and pure affections. I found my Laura in a vastly different political vein from her previous one. She had taken some peeps into the newspapers, not at all for the sake of the public, but for mine; and all the deep warmth of her nature was stirred, by the Radical outrage, to her country and her home. "About the suffrage, and the Constitution, and the Abstinence-cause, I know nothing, or less than nothing--as gentlemen express it, though I don't see how there can be less than nothing;" she said to me, the very day after my arrival. "But about right and wrong, everybody has a right to some opinion. For poor landowners, what is it but robbery, downright robbery, to take away their land, and compel them to start afresh to earn more? But, oh, Tommy, Tommy, it takes all my breath away, to think of surrendering the English fleet to the bitterest enemies of England! Oh, come in here, that I may show you something it will strengthen all your principles to see."