I11.] THE SILVER FAIRIES. 153 |

 

took a larger and more enlightened view of the
subject. It was sufficient for them that their candi-
date should be a man with a stake in the country,
and Simon’s stake was evidently so considerable that
his fitness could not be doubted for a moment. And
so it came about that, when the election came on,
without having made a single intelligible speech or
propounded a single political opinion beyond the
broad statement that he thought public-houses should
be kept open as long as people liked to drink in them,
and was otherwise generally in favour of supporting
the British Constitution in Church and State, Simon
Ricketts was triumphantly elected a member of
Parliament.

Great were the rejoicings that followed, more beer
was consumed, more notes were taken out of the
drawer, and joy and exultation filled the heart of the
female members of the family. The worthy milk-
man, however, was not long before he began to find
out that he had entered upon a state of life very
different from that to which he had hitherto been
accustomed. Even when dressed in his best Sunday
clothes and smartened up under the careful eye of
Martha Pattison, he hardly felt easy in the new
society which he had entered. The company was not
altogether so select as he had been used to believe
before he had become one of them himself, and being
aman of much natural acuteness, he soon found out
that a man did not necessarily become a gentleman
either in tone, manners, or education, as soon as he
became a member of Parliament. Then they kept
very bad hours, and Simon, who had habitually sought