that he never
really feared Gurd, because he looked ahead and felt that two such
natures as mine and Richard's were never meant to join in matrimony.
Looking back, I see Job's every move and the brain behind it. Talk about
Parliament! If Bridport was to send Legg there, they'd be sending one
that's ten times wiser than Raymond Ironsyde--and ten times deeper. In
fact, the nation's very ill served by most that go there. They are the
showy, rich, noisy sort, who want to bulk in the public eye without
working for it--ciphers who do what they're told, and don't understand
the inner nature of what they're doing more than a hoss in a plough. But
men like Job, though not so noisy, would get to the root, and use their
own judgment, and rise superior to party politics and the pitiful need
to shout with your side, right or wrong."

"Miss Waldron is very wishful for him to get in, and she says he's got
good ideas," replied Nicholas.

"If so, he has to thank her for them," added Sarah.

"And I hope," continued Nicholas, "that if he does get in, he'll be
suffered to make a speech, and his words will fall stone dead on the
ears of the members, and his schemes will fail. Then he'll know what it
is to be flouted and to see his best feats win not a friendly sign."

"Electors are a lot too easy going in my opinion," said Nelly. "I'm old
enough to have seen their foolish ways in my time, and find, over and
over again, that they are mostly gulls to be took with words. They never
ask what a man's record is and turn over the pages of his past. They
never trouble about what he's done, or how he's made his money, or where
he stands in public report. It isn't what he has done, but what he's
going to do. Yet you can better judge of a man from his past than his
promises, and measure, in the light of his record, whether he's going to
the House of Commons for patriotic, decent reasons, or for mean ones.
And never you vote for a lawyer, Nicholas Roberts. 'Tis a golden rule
with Job that never, under any manner of circumstances, will he help to
get a lawyer into Parliament. They stand in the way of all progress but
their own; they suck our blood in every affair of life; they baffle all
honest thinking with their cunning, and look at right and wrong only
from the point of expediency. Job says there ought to be a law against
lawyers going in at all. But catch them making it! In fact, we're in
their clutches more than the fly in the web, because they