authority in the kitchen, in
which she had reigned supreme for fourteen years. Mrs Bradshaw sighed
and bemoaned herself in all her leisure moments, which were not many,
and wondered why their house was to be turned into an inn for this
Mr Donne, when everybody knew that the George was good enough for
the Cranworths, who never thought of asking the electors to the
Hall;--and they had lived at Cranworth ever since Julius Caesar's
time, and if that was not being an old family, she did not know what
was. The excitement soothed Jemima. There was something to do. It was
she who planned with the upholsterer; it was she who soothed Betsy
into angry silence; it was she who persuaded her mother to lie down
and rest, while she herself went out to buy the heterogeneous things
required to make the family and house presentable to Mr Donne and
his precursor--the friend of the parliamentary agent. This latter
gentleman never appeared himself on the scene of action, but pulled
all the strings notwithstanding. The friend was a Mr Hickson, a
lawyer--a briefless barrister, some people called him; but he himself
professed a great disgust to the law, as a "great sham," which
involved an immensity of underhand action, and truckling, and
time-serving, and was perfectly encumbered by useless forms and
ceremonies, and dead obsolete words. So, instead of putting his
shoulder to the wheel to reform the law, he talked eloquently against
it, in such a high-priest style, that it was occasionally a matter of
surprise how he could ever have made a friend of the parliamentary
agent before mentioned. But, as Mr Hickson himself said, it was the
very corruptness of the law which he was fighting against, in doing
all he could to effect the return of certain members to Parliament;
these certain members being pledged to effect a reform in the law,
according to Mr Hickson. And, as he once observed confidentially, "If
you had to destroy a hydra-headed monster, would you measure swords
with the demon as if he were a gentleman? Would you not rather seize
the first weapon that came to hand? And so do I. My great object in
life, sir, is to reform the law of England, sir. Once get a majority
of Liberal members into the House, and the thing is done. And I
consider myself justified, for so high--for, I may say, so holy--an
end, in using men's weaknesses to work out my purpose. Of course, if
men were angels, or even immaculate--men invulnerable to bribes, we
would not