that she intended to consult Mr. Comfort. "Oh, Mr. Comfort!"
said Mrs. Prime, signifying her opinion that her mother was going to
a very poor counsellor. "And what sort of a letter was it?" said Mrs.
Prime, with a not unnatural desire to see it.

"It was an honest letter enough,--very honest to my thinking; and
speaking as though everything between them was quite settled."

"That's nonsense, mother."

"Perhaps it may be nonsense, Dorothea; but I am only telling you what
the letter said. He called his mother a goose; that was the worst
thing in it."

"You cannot expect that such a one as he should honour his parents."

"But his mother thinks him the finest young man in the world. And I
must say this for him, that he has always spoken of her as though he
loved her very dearly; and I believe he has been a most excellent
son. He shouldn't have said goose;--at any rate in a letter;--not to
my way of thinking. But perhaps they don't mind those things up in
London."

"I never knew a young man so badly spoken of at a place he'd left as
he is in Baslehurst. I think it right to tell you; but if you have
made up your mind to ask Mr. Comfort--"

"Yes; I have made up my mind to ask Mr. Comfort. He has sent to say
he will call the day after to-morrow." Then Mrs. Prime went back
home, having seen neither the letter nor her sister.

It may be remembered that an election was impending over the town of
Baslehurst, the coming necessities of which had induced Mrs. Butler
Cornbury to grace Mrs. Tappitt's ball. It was now nearly the end
of July, and the election was to be made early in September. Both
candidates were already in the field, and the politicians of the
neighbourhood already knew to a nicety how the affair would go. Mr.
Hart the great clothier from Houndsditch and Regent Street,--Messrs.
Hart and Jacobs of from 110 to 136 Houndsditch, and about as many
more numbers in Regent Street,--would come in at the top of the poll
with 173 votes, and Butler Cornbury, whose forefathers had lived in
the neighbourhood for the last four hundred years and been returned
for various places in Devonshire to dozens of parliaments, would be
left in the lurch with 171 votes. A petition might probably unseat
the Jew clothier; but then, as was well known, the Cornbury estate
could not bear the expenditure of the necessary five thousand pounds
for the petition, in addition to the twelve hundred which the
election itself was computed to cost. I