e to Murchison. Now that I've made up my mind to
stop till after Christmas I'll be on hand for the fight. I've had some
experience. I used to canvass now and then from Oxford; it was always a
tremendous lark."

"Oh, Mr Hesketh, DO! Really and truly he is one of my oldest friends,
and I should love to see him get in. I know his sister, too. They're
a very clever family. Quite self-made, you know, but highly respected.
Promise me you will."

"I promise with pleasure. And I wish it were something it would give me
more trouble to perform. I like Murchison," said Hesketh.

All this transpiring while they were supposed to be eating green-gage
preserves, and Mrs Milburn and Miss Filkin endeavoured to engage the
head of the house in the kind of easy allusion to affairs of the moment
to which Mr Hesketh would be accustomed as a form of conversation--the
accident to the German Empress, the marriage of one of the Rothschilds.
The ladies were compelled to supply most of the facts and all of the
interest but they kept up a gallant line of attack; and the young man,
taking gratified possession of Dora's eyes, was extremely obliged to
them.

Hesketh lost no time in communicating his willingness to be of use to
Murchison, and Lorne felt all his old friendliness rise up in him as he
cordially accepted the offer. It was made with British heartiness, it
was thoroughly meant. Lorne was half-ashamed in his recognition of its
quality. A certain aloofness had grown in him against his will since
Hesketh had prolonged his stay in the town, difficult to justify,
impossible to define. Hesketh as Hesketh was worthily admirable as ever,
wholesome and agreeable, as well turned out by his conscience as he was
by his tailor; it was Hesketh in his relation to his new environment
that seemed vaguely to come short. This in spite of an enthusiasm which
was genuine enough; he found plenty of things to like about the country.
It was perhaps in some manifestation of sensitiveness that he failed;
he had the adaptability of the pioneer among rugged conditions, but he
could not mingle quite immediately with the essence of them; he did not
perceive the genius loci. Lorne had been conscious of this as a kind of
undefined grievance; now he specified it and put it down to Hesketh's
isolation among ways that were different from the ways he knew. You were
bound to notice that Hesketh as a stranger had his own point of view,
his own training to retreat upon.

"I