Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. I, 1866.djvu/257

Rh Mr Chubb threw open the parlour door, and then stepping back, took the opportunity of saying, in a low tone, to Felix, "Do you know this gentleman?"

"Not I; no."

Mr Chubb's opinion of Felix Holt sank from that moment. The parlour door was closed, but no one sat down or ordered beer.

"I say, master," said Mike Brindle, going up to Felix, "don't you think that's one o' the 'lection men?"

"Very likely."

"I heared a chap say they're up and down everywhere," said Brindle; "and now's the time, they say, when a man can get beer for nothing."

"Ay, that's sin' the Reform," said a big, red-whiskered man, called Dredge. "That's brought the 'lections and the drink into these parts; for afore that, it was all kep up the Lord knows wheer."

"Well, but the Reform's niver come anigh Sprox'on," said a grey-haired but stalwart man called Old Sleck. "I don't believe nothing about'n, I don't."

"Don't you?" said Brindle, with some contempt. "Well, I do. There's folks won't believe beyond the end o' their own pickaxes. You can't drive nothing into 'em, not if you split their skulls. I