Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/236

228 business ?Aren't you her member, and can't her member pass a day with her, and she a great proprietor?"

Nick turned round at this, with an odd expression. "Her member—am I hers?"

Lady Agnes hesitated a moment; she felt that she had need of all her tact. "Well, if the place is hers, and you represent the place—" she began. But she went no further, for Nick interrupted her with a laugh.

"What a droll thing to 'represent,' when one thinks of it! And what does it represent, poor torpid little borough, with its smell of meal and its curiously fat-faced inhabitants? Did you ever see such a collection of fat faces, turned up at the hustings? They looked like an enormous sofa, with the cheeks for the gathers and the eyes for the buttons."

"Oh, well, the next time you shall have a great town," Lady Agnes replied, smiling and feeling that she was tactful.

"It will only be a bigger sofa! I'm joking, of course," Nick went on, "and I ought to be ashamed of myself. They have done me the honour to elect me, and I shall never say a word that's not civil about them, poor dears. But even a new member may joke with his mother."

"I wish you'd be serious with your mother," said Lady Agnes, going nearer to him.

"The difficulty is that I'm two men; it's the strangest thing that ever was," Nick pursued, bending his bright face upon her. "I'm two quite distinct human beings, who have scarcely a point in common; not even the memory, on the part of one, of the achievements or the adventures of the other. One man wins the seat—but it's the other fellow who sits in it."