Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. II, 1866.djvu/94

84 should be Whigs as well as Tories—Pitt and Fox—I've always heard them go together."

"Well, I don't like Garstin," said the brewer. "I didn't like his conduct about the Canal Company. Of the two, I like Transome best. If a nag is to throw me, I say, let him have some blood."

"As for blood, Wace," said Mr Salt, the wool-factor, a bilious man, who only spoke when there was a good opportunity of contradicting, "ask my brother-in-law Labron a little about that. These Transomes are not the old blood."

"Well, they're the oldest that's forthcoming, I suppose," said Mr Wace, laughing. "Unless you believe in mad old Tommy Trounsem. I wonder where that old poaching fellow is now."

"I saw him half-drunk the other day," said young Joyce. "He'd got a flag-basket with hand-bills in it over his shoulder."

"I thought the old fellow was dead," said Mr Wace. "Hey! why, Jermyn," he went on merrily, as he turned round and saw the attorney entering; "you Radical! how dare you show yourself in this Tory house? Come, this is going a bit too far. We don't mind Old Harry managing our law for us—that's his proper business from time immemorial; but"