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 IV

FATE'S WAY—OR LADY MEG'S

HE scene is at Hazleby, Lord Dunstanbury's Essex seat. His lordship is striking the top off his breakfast egg.

"I say, Cousin Meg, old Brownlow's got a deuced pretty kitchen-maid."

"There you go! There you go! Just like your father, and your grandfather, and all of them! If the English people had any spirit, they'd have swept the Dunstanburys and all the wicked Whig gang into the sea long ago."

"Before you could turn round they'd have bought it up, enclosed it, and won an election by opening it to ships at a small fee on Sundays," said Mr. Pindar.

"Why are Whigs worse than Tories?" inquired Mr. Pikes, with an air of patient inquiry.

"The will of Heaven, I suppose," sniffed Lady Margaret Duddington.

"To display Divine Omnipotence in that line," suggested Mr. Pindar.

"A deuced pretty girl!" said Dunstanbury, in reflective tones. He was doing his best to reproduce the impression he had received at Morpingham Hall, but obviously with no great success.

"On some pretext, frivolous though it be, let us drive over and see this miracle," Pindar suggested. 29