have been the further
wording, which she spared me; and I thanked her, wishing, at the same
time, that she would get the habit of using choicer phrases whenever
there might, by chance, be a stress of emotion between us. Her
trembling, and her 'I'd be off,' came into unpleasant collision in the
recollection.

I acknowledge to myself that she was a true and hearty friend. She
listened with interest to my discourse on the necessity of my being in
Parliament before I could venture to propose formally for the hand
of the princess, and undertook to bear the burden of all consequent
negotiations with my grandfather. If she would but have allowed me to
speak of Temple, instead of saying, 'Don't, Harry, I like him so
much!' at the very mention of his name, I should have sincerely felt my
indebtedness to her, and some admiration of her fine spirit and figure
besides. I could not even agree with my aunt Dorothy that Janet was
handsome. When I had to grant her a pardon I appreciated her better.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. MY BANKERS' BOOK

The squire again did honour to Janet's eulogy and good management of
him.

'And where,' said she, 'would you find a Radical to behave so
generously, Harry, when it touches him so?'

He accorded me his permission to select my side in politics, merely
insisting that I was never to change it, and this he requested me to
swear to, for (he called the ghost of old Sewis to witness) he abhorred
a turncoat.

'If you're to be a Whig, or a sneaking half-and-half, I can't help you
much,' he remarked. 'I can pop a young Tory in for my borough, maybe;
but I can't insult a number of independent Englishmen by asking them to
vote for the opposite crew; that's reasonable, eh? And I can't promise
you plumpers for the county neither. You can date your Address from
Riversley. You'll have your house in town. Tell me this princess
of yours is ready with her hand, and,' he threw in roughly, 'is a
respectable young woman, I'll commence building. You'll have a house fit
for a prince in town and country, both.'

Temple had produced an effect on him by informing him that 'this
princess of mine' was entitled to be considered a fit and proper person,
in rank and blood, for an alliance with the proudest royal Houses of
Europe, and my grandfather was not quite destitute of consolation in the
prospect I presented to him. He was a curious study to me, of the Tory
mind, in its attachment to solidity, fixity, certainty, its