e meeting
was to be at eight, and it is three-quarters of an hour's drive into
Barchurch, and there was to be a big supper after. Lady Carriston did
make such a fuss over Charlie's wrist. She wanted to know was it badly
sprained, and did it ache much, and was it swollen, and he had the
impudence to let her almost cry over him, and pretended to wince when
she touched it! As we were driving in to the meeting he sat next me in
the omnibus, and kept squeezing my arm all the time under the rug,
which did annoy me so, that at last I gave his ankle a nasty kick, and
then he left off for a little. He has not the ways of a gentleman, and
I think he had better marry his Cora, and settle down into a class more
suited to him than ours; but _I_ shan't help him with his Grandfather.

[Sidenote: _Politics and Principle_]

Have you ever been to a political meeting, dear Mamma? It is funny! All
these old gentlemen sit up on a platform and talk such a lot. The Duke
put in "buts" and "ifs" and "thats" over and over again when he could
not think of a word, and you weren't a bit the wiser when he had
finished, except that it was awfully wrong to put up barbed wire; but I
can't see what that has to do with politics, can you? One of the
pepper-and-salts did speak nicely, and so did one of the new
people--quite a youngish person; but they all had such a lot of words,
when it would have done just as well if they had simply said that of
course our side was the right one--because trade was good when we were
in, and that there are much better people Conservatives than Radicals.
Anyway, no one stays a Radical when he gets to be his own father, as it
would be absurd to cut off one's nose to spite one's face--don't you
think so, Mamma? So it is nonsense talking so much.

One or two rude people in the back called out things, but no one paid
any attention; and at last, after lots of cheering, we got into the
omnibus again. I _was_ hungry. At supper we sat more or less anyhow,
and I happened to be next the youngish person who spoke. I don't know
his name, but I know he wasn't any one very grand, as Lady Carriston
said, before they arrived in the afternoon, that things were changing
dreadfully; that even the Conservative party was being invaded by
people of no family; and she gave him two fingers when she said "How
d'ye do?" But if he is nobody, I call it very nice of him to be a
Conservative, and then he won't have to change afterwards when he gets
h