She was a young woman, with a mischievous face and bright hair. "He'll be glad to have you on His side again," she remarked demurely. "He was missing you." Mr. Pigott scowled melodramatically at the offender. She refused to catch his eye, busy with her work. "Five pound a week isn't a bad God as times go," she went on. Alf smirked. "It's seven pound ten," he said, and withdrew. "Elsie Pigott!" roared her husband, when the outside door had shut. "Sir!" answered his bride, and added--"Mr. Trupp's taken him on.... Mrs. Trupp's furious...." Alf, in spite of his access of faith, never returned to chapel. As he remarked to his mother, "I got me principles. And I must stick to em." "That's it," said his mother. "Stick to em--until you want to change em." Anne Caspar cherished now no illusions about her second son. She no longer cared for Alf--for he was no longer dependent on her; nor did she respect him. But his naïveté, the outrageous sincerity of his egotism, appealed to a certain grim sense of humour she possessed. CHAPTER XXV THE CHURCHMAN Alf, with all his faults, had at least the supreme virtue of the animal living in a fiercely competitive world: he never missed a chance. A year after he began to drive for Mr. Trupp, he had a second car, a man driving for him, and another on repairing work. Success sugared his political outlook, just as defeat had soured it. Like most really hard men, he saved himself in his own eyes by becoming a thorough-going sentimentalist. In the course of a year or two, King and Country had become the objects of his ferocious admiration; while the masses of his countrymen were to be dealt with as ruthlessly as expediency and the Vote would allow. "Traitors, I call em," he confided to his new friend, the Reverend Spink. "All for their fat selves all the time. Never think of you and me. They fair give me the hiccoughs." At the General Election of 1906 he came out fearlessly for God and the Conservative Party. The two candidates for West Beachbourne were, as all decent men admitted, the worst who ever stood for a constituency. The sitting member had just received that which he entered Parliament to obtain--a Baronetcy; and his solitary ambition now was to be defeated. Unfortunately an aspiring wife had other views to which her spouse had to give way. His opponent, on the other hand, had, according to the enemy, recently emerged "from a home of rest" in order to contest the constituency. At the preceding Khaki Election the Conservative candidate, who was an undoubtedly fine whip, had secured the "Triumph of Right," as Archdeacon Willcocks finely called it, by the simple process of driving a well-appointed team through the constituency. "I'll vote for them 'orses," had been the general verdict. The victor now repeated his tactics.