ainly at least four in the family who bought clothes at Shillitoe's,
and everybody looked elaborately costly, except Hilda Lessways, who did
not flatter the eye. But equally, they all seemed quite unconscious of
their costliness.

"Now, Charlie darling, you must look after Mr Edwin," said Mrs
Orgreave.

"She never calls us darling," said Johnnie, affecting disgust.

"She will, as soon as you've left home," said Janet, ironically
soothing.

"I do, I often do!" Mrs Orgreave asserted. "Much oftener than you
deserve."

"Sit down, Teddy," Charlie enjoined.

"Oh! I'm all right, thanks," said Edwin.

"Sit down!" Charlie insisted, using force.

"Do you talk to your poor patients in that tone?" Alicia inquired, from
the shelter of her father.

"Here I come down specially to see them," Charlie mused aloud, as he
twisted the corkscrew into the cork of the bottle, unceremoniously
handed to him by Martha, "and not only they don't offer to pay my fares,
but they grudge me a drop of claret! Plupp!" He grimaced as the cork
came out. "And my last night, too! Hilda, this is better than coffee,
as Saint Paul remarked on a famous occasion. Pass your glass."

"Charlie!" his mother protested. "I'll thank you to leave Saint Paul
out."

"Charlie! Your mother will be boxing your ears if you don't mind," his
father warned him.

"I'll not have it!" said his mother, shaking her head in a fashion that
she imagined to be harsh and forbidding.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TWO.

Towards the close of the meal, Mr Orgreave said--

"Well, Edwin, what does your father say about Bradlaugh?"

"He doesn't say much," Edwin replied.

"Let me see, does he call himself a Liberal?"

"He calls himself a Liberal," said Edwin, shifting on his chair. "Yes,
he calls himself a Liberal. But I'm afraid he's a regular old Tory."

Edwin blushed, laughing, as half the family gave way to more or less
violent mirth.

"Father's a regular old Tory too," Charlie grinned.

"Oh! I'm sorry," said Edwin.

"Yes, father's a regular old Tory," agreed Mr Orgreave. "Don't
apologise! Don't apologise! I'm used to these attacks. I've been
nearly kicked out of my own house once. But some one has to keep the
flag flying."

It was plain that Mr Orgreave enjoyed the unloosing of the hurricane
which he had brought about. Mrs Orgreave used to say that he employed
that particular tone from a naught