"Not the ghost of another candidate."
"I did not think there would be. They have tried it once or twice and
have always failed. There are only one or two in the place who like
to go one way just because their neighbours go the other. But, in
truth, there is no conservative feeling in the place!"
Phineas, although he was at the present moment the member for
Loughton himself, could not but enjoy the joke of this. Could there
be any liberal feeling in such a place, or, indeed, any political
feeling whatsoever? Would not Messrs. Grating and Shortribs have done
just the same had it happened that Lord Brentford had been a Tory
peer? "They all seemed to be very obliging," said Phineas, in answer
to the Earl.
"Yes, they are. There isn't a house in the town, you know, let
for longer than seven years, and most of them merely from year to
year. And, do you know, I haven't a farmer on the property with a
lease,--not one; and they don't want leases. They know they're safe.
But I do like the people round me to be of the same way of thinking
as myself about politics."
On the second day after dinner,--the last evening of Finn's visit to
Saulsby,--the Earl fell suddenly into a confidential conversation
about his daughter and his son, and about Violet Effingham.
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