y as a
humbug. A medical practitioner who had failed to obtain the post of
House Surgeon at the Hospital, owing to the support the President had
given to another competitor for the post, had alluded to him bitterly as
a blatant ass; and a leading publican who had been fined before the
magistrates for diluting his spirits, was in the habit of darkly
uttering his opinion that Jerry Brander was a deep card and up to no
good.

But as every great man has his enemies, the opinion of a few malcontents
went for nothing in the general consensus of admiration for one who was
generally regarded as among the pillars of Abchester society, and an
honor to the city.

"It is high time you did something, Jerry," his wife said to him one
morning after their three daughters had left the breakfast-table.

"In what way, Eliza?" Mr. Brander said, looking up from his newspaper;
"it seems to me I do a good deal."

"You know what I mean," she said, sharply. "You know you promised me a
hundred times that you would give up all this miserable business and
settle down in the county. The girls are growing up, Mary has just left
Girton and is of an age to go into society."

"She may be of age," Mr. Brander said, with an irritability unusual to
him, "but it strikes me that society is the last thing she is thinking
of. We made a mistake altogether in giving way to her and letting her go
to that place; she has got her head full of all sorts of absurd ideas
about woman's mission and woman's duties, and nonsense of that sort, and
has got out of hand altogether. You have not a shadow of influence over
her, and I can't say that I have much more. Thank goodness her sisters
don't take after her in any way."

"Well, that is all true," Mrs. Brander said, "and you know we have
agreed on that subject for a long time, but it is no answer to my
question. I have been content to live all these years in this miserable
dull place, because I was fool enough to believe your promise that you
would in time give up all this work and take a position in the county."

"To some extent I kept my promise," he said. "There is not a week that
we don't drive half-a-dozen miles, and sometimes a dozen, to take part
in a dull dinner."

"That is all very well so far as it goes, but we simply go to these
dinners because you are the family lawyer and I am your wife."

"Well, well, you know, Eliza, that I was in treaty for the Haywood's
Estate when that confounded mine that I ha