or his gravity he retreated.

Beauchamp found him sauntering on the pavement, and would have dismissed
him but for an agreeable diversion that occurred at that moment. A
suavely smiling unctuous old gentleman advanced to them, bowing, and
presuming thus far, he said, under the supposition that he was accosting
the junior Liberal candidate for the borough. He announced his name and
his principles Tomlinson, progressive Liberal.

'A true distinction from some Liberals I know,' said Beauchamp.

Mr. Tomlinson hoped so. Never, he said, did he leave it to the man of his
choice at an election to knock at his door for the vote.

Beauchamp looked as if he had swallowed a cordial. Votes falling into his
lap are heavenly gifts to the candidate sick of the knocker and the bell.
Mr. Tomlinson eulogized the manly candour of the junior Liberal
candidate's address, in which he professed to see ideas that
distinguished it from the address of the sound but otherwise conventional
Liberal, Mr. Cougham. He muttered of plumping for Beauchamp. 'Don't
plump,' Beauchamp said; and a candidate, if he would be an honourable
twin, must say it. Cougham had cautioned him against the heresy of
plumping.

They discoursed of the poor and their beverages, of pothouses, of the
anti-liquorites, and of the duties of parsons, and the value of a robust
and right-minded body of the poor to the country. Palmet found himself
following them into a tolerably spacious house that he took to be the old
gentleman's until some of the apparatus of an Institute for literary and
scientific instruction revealed itself to him, and he heard Mr. Tomlinson
exalt the memory of one Wingham for the blessing bequeathed by him to the
town of Bevisham. 'For,' said Mr. Tomlinson, 'it is open to both sexes,
to all respectable classes, from ten in the morning up to ten at night.
Such a place affords us, I would venture to say, the advantages without
the seductions of a Club. I rank it next--at a far remove, but next-the
church.'

Lord Palmet brought his eyes down from the busts of certain worthies
ranged along the top of the book-shelves to the cushioned chairs, and
murmured, 'Capital place for an appointment with a woman.'

Mr. Tomlinson gazed up at him mildly, with a fallen countenance. He
turned sadly agape in silence to the busts, the books, and the range of
scientific instruments, and directed a gaze under his eyebrows at
Beauchamp. 'Does your friend canvass with you?' he i