“Really, this ignorance is discreditable to you, marchioness. Alderman Dobbin is the autocrat of the constituency I have the honor to represent, the Chairman of the Tooting Conservative Association. In me you behold Alderman Dobbin’s slave. He is my moral mentor and political taskmaster. Since I sat for Tooting I have ceased to be a free citizen with thoughts or ideas of my own. I am a mere puppet, the strings of which are pulled by him. The lips may be the lips of Hammond, but the voice is the voice of Alderman Dobbin.” Lady Victoria raised her head with an appearance of interest during this speech. She now remarked: “From what you say, I am sure he is a charming person. You have made me quite in love with him. I shall flirt with him when he comes.” Hammond gazed at her with stern reproach. “Lady Victoria, you commit yourself most painfully. Alderman Dobbin is married. Alderman Dobbin is the father of a large family. Alderman Dobbin, moreover, is a church-warden, and in the High Street of Tooting the sinner trembles when he passes the shop which bears Alderman Dobbin’s name and superscription.” “Don’t you see that you are simply making me more determined by all this?” returned Victoria. “I shall feel like the loreley, or whatever they call it, luring the well-conducted fisherman to his destruction.” “Did you say he kept a shop?” put in the marchioness, who already began to see in the alderman a possible ally. “What does he sell?” “Boots. Since I was returned for Tooting my unworthy feet have been clothed in Alderman Dobbin’s handiwork. The shoes which I have on are made of a substance which he supposes to be patent leather. They are his choice, not mine. I am as wax in his hands. If he required me to wear Wellingtons, I should obey. At his bidding I have changed my tailor and discharged my groom; and if ever I want to choose a wife I shall first have to ask Alderman Dobbin’s consent.” “I have no doubt he is a very sensible man, and you could not do better than take his advice,” said the marchioness, who was quite serious. “I am very glad he is coming here. We don’t see nearly enough of the--er--the other classes. When my husband was Master of the Deerhounds, I once gave a thing they called a Primrose Tea down at our place in Worcestershire, but I didn’t speak to any of the creatures that came to it, except one dreadful person, who, they told me, was a justice of the peace. He called me ‘My lady,’ exactly like that delightful character who wants to murder everybody in one of somebody’s novels.” “I expect the alderman will call you ‘ma’am,’” observed Hammond, reflectively. “I once knew a solicitor in a Welsh town,” said Despencer, slowly, “where they had just elected a peer of royal descent as mayor, and this solicitor urged that they should return another solicitor, who happened to be a Jubilee knight, to the town council, in order that his lordship might have some one of his own rank to talk to.”