Page:The Inheritors, An Extravagant Story.djvu/263

 You'll miss the other heavy guns if you stop with me. I do it ostentatiously—wait until they've done. They're all trembling; all of them. My husband will be on the platform—trembling too. He is a type of them. All day long and at odd moments at night I talk to him—out-talk him and silence him. What's the state of popular feeling to him? He's for the country, not the town—this sort of thing has nothing to do with him. It's a matter to be settled by Jews in the City. Well, he sees it at night, and then in the morning the papers undo all my work. He begins to talk about his seat—which I got for him. I've been the 'voice of the county' for years now. Well, it'll soon be a voice without a county. . . What is it? 'The old order changeth.' So, I've arranged it that I shall wait until the trembling big-wigs have stuttered their speeches out, and then I'm going to sail down the centre aisle and listen to Churchill with visible signs of approval. It won't do much today, but there was a time when it would have changed the course of an election. . . Ah, there's Effie's young man. It's time."

She rose and marched, with the air of going to