g anyway....

As all the world knows, Gladstone's party failed to get in, largely
owing to the influence of the publicans and brewers, who had been
alarmed at his attempts to regulate the liquor traffic, and Mr. Disraeli
came into power; the pendulum had swung once more. Daniel Flynn had paid
a flying visit to the West and made a few impassioned speeches in favour
of the Liberal candidate, and Ishmael had driven him about the country.
If Blanche Grey could have looked ahead she might have seen fit to stand
by her bargain after all. That Vassie and her Irish firebrand should sit
at dinner with Lord Luxullyan, that Ishmael should be called upon to
receive with the other county potentates a Royal princeling on a tour in
the West--who could have foretold these things? Certainly not Ishmael
himself; and though the Parson had had limitless ambitions for him, he
had never thought of them in actual terms.

Neither was Boase altogether happy about the path in life of his
spiritual son, although that path seemed to lead, in its unobtrusive
manner, upward. It was an age when materialism was to the fore, when the
old faiths had not yet seen their way to harmonise with the undeniable
facts of science, when morality itself was of a rather priggish and
material order. And Ishmael would in not so many years now be reaching
the most material time of life--middle age. At present he was very much
under the sway of two entirely different people--Daniel Flynn and little
Nicky.

When Nicky reached the age of eight years he was entrancing, very much
of a personage, and to Ishmael a delightful enigma. Nicky was so vivid,
so full of passing enthusiasm, so confident of himself, with none of the
diffidence that had burdened Ishmael's own youth. He was not a pretty
boy, but a splendidly healthy-looking one, with fair hair, not curly,
but rough, that defied all the blandishments of Macassar oil, and long
limbs, rather supple than sturdy, for ever growing out of his clothes.
He had the pretty coaxing ways of a young animal--Phoebe's ways, with
a bolder dash in them; and his brown eyes looked at one so frankly that
it was a long time before Ishmael could bring himself to understand that
this son of his was apparently without any feeling for the truth. It was
not so much that he lied as that he seemed incapable of discriminating
between the truth and a lie; whatever seemed the most pleasant thing to
say at the moment Nicky said, and hoped for the be