is
speeches, nothing more pleasant than his popularity; but he could
not fail to become aware, after a further sojourn of three days at
Percycross, of two things. The first was this,--that if the borough
were spared there would be a compromise between the leading men on
the two sides, and Mr. Westmacott would be returned together with a
young Griffenbottom. The second conviction forced upon him was that
the borough would not be spared. There was no comfort for him at
Percycross,--other than what arose from a pure political conscience.
On the very morning on which he left, he besought his friends, the
young men,--though they were about to be punished, degraded, and
disfranchised for the sins of their elders, though it might never be
allowed to them again to stir themselves for the political welfare
of their own borough,--still to remember that Purity and the Rights
of Labour were the two great wants of the world, and that no man
could make an effort, however humble, in a good cause without doing
something towards bringing nearer to him that millennium of political
virtue which was so much wanted, and which would certainly come
sooner or later. He was cheered to the echo, and almost carried down
to the station on the shoulders of a chairman, or president, and
a secretary; but he left Percycross with the conviction that that
borough would never confer upon him the coveted honour of a seat in
Parliament.

All this had happened early in March, previous to that Sunday on
which Mr. Neefit behaved so rudely to him at the cottage. "I think as
perhaps you'd better stick to business now a bit," said old Moggs. At
that moment Ontario was sitting up at a high desk behind the ledger
which he hated, and was sticking to business as well as he knew how
to stick to it. "No more Cheshire Cheeses, if you please, young man,"
said the father. This was felt by the son to be unfair, cruel, and
even corrupt. While the election was going on, as long as there was
a hope of success at Percycross, Moggs senior had connived at the
Cheshire Cheese, had said little or nothing about business, had even
consented on one occasion to hear his son make a speech advocating
the propriety of combination among workmen. "It ain't my way of
thinking," Moggs senior had said; "but then, perhaps, I'm old." To
have had a member of the firm in Parliament would have been glorious
even to old Moggs, though he hardly knew in what the glory would have
consisted. But as