When Lady Cicely easily succeeded, late in the day, in securing the distinction of being appointed one of the stall-keepers at a bazaar, and the chief patroness of a conversazione in the neglected museum, in the course of caterprises undertaken by an indefatigable eleemosynary committee in the behalf of the local charities, Fan cheerfully worked and catered for her ladyship’s stall, and for the sale of her packets of tickets. It seemed as if Oliver must be on John Hartley’s committee, the list of whose members soon bore the bold scrawl of Harry Stanhope’s name. The young fellow chose to write himself, with his most unyeomanlike fist, ‘Harry Stanhope, yeoman.’ It appeared as if the Oxford-bred miller must be dragged forward, in his own despite, to take the place which fortune and education had given him, to ride and drive, and lunch and speechify, here and there, in the heat of faction, with those to whom he was really allied, so as to forget the mill and the baker’s shop with their drudgery, and to forget along with them other shops and their drudgeries, other shopkeepers with their aims and rewards—high or low—of which Oliver Constable’s mind had lately been full. It looked as if Oliver were going to comply with the irresistible demands made upon him as a man and a citizen. He received John Hartley with tolerable cordiality. The one man listened to the other’s private explanations as well as to his public speeches, and, in order to do both fairly, Oliver not only attended the meetings the candidate was calling, but accepted his invitations to dine _en famille_ with him and Lady Cicely. The result, which Oliver could not well avoid, was that a considerable amount of familiarity was established between him and the Hartleys. He was hailed as an ally by John Hartley on all occasions; and it was Oliver’s arm which Lady Cicely took when she left her stall at the bazaar to go to the refreshment table, and when she walked the whole length and breadth of the town-hall in order to make her purchases from her fellow-stall-keepers.