ays,' he
answered. 'It's no use to stand for your borough any more. The American,
you know, he "runs" for Congress. By-and-by we shall all be flying after
the thing we want.' He smiled at Jean.

'Sh!' She glanced over her shoulder and spoke low. 'All sorts of
irrelevant people here.'

One of them, unable any longer to resist the temptation, was making a
second foray into the hall.

'How do you do, Mr. Stonor?' Farnborough stood there holding out his
hand.

The great man seemed not to see it, but he murmured, 'How do you do?'
and proceeded to share with Lady John his dislike of any means of
locomotion except his own legs or those of a horse.

It took a great deal to disconcert Farnborough. 'Some of us were arguing
in the smoking-room last night,' he said, 'whether it didn't hurt a
candidate's chances going about in a motor.'

As Mr. Stonor, not deigning to reply to this, paused the merest instant
in what he was saying to his hostess, Lord John came to the rescue of
the audacious young gentleman.

'Yes, we've been hearing a great many stories about the unpopularity of
motor-cars--among the class that hasn't got 'em, of course.'

'I'm sure,' Lady John put in, 'you gain more votes by being able to
reach so many more of your constituents than we used----'

'Well, I don't know,' said Stonor. 'I've sometimes wondered whether the
charm of our presence wasn't counterbalanced by the way we tear about
smothering our fellow-beings in dust and running down their pigs and
chickens,--not to speak of their children.'

'What on the whole are the prospects?' Lord John asked.

'We shall have to work harder than we realized,' Stonor answered
gravely.

Farnborough let slip an 'Ah, I said so!' meant for Lady John, and then
before Stonor's raised eyes, the over-zealous young politician retreated
towards the window--but with hands in his pockets and head held high,
like one who has made his mark. And so in truth he had. For Lady John
let drop one or two good-natured phrases--what he had done, his
hero-worship, his mother had been a Betham--Yes, he was one of the
Farnboroughs of Moore Abbey. Though Stonor made no comment beyond a dry,
'The staple product of this country, young men like that!'--it appeared
later that Lady John's good offices in favour of a probable
nephew-in-law had not been invoked in vain.

Despite the menace of 'the irrelevant' dotting the lawn immediately
outside the windows, the little group on the farther