72 STRAY -AW AYS 



in the sunshine was clean and free. The young man 

 did not know how they and all things fell into keep- 

 ing with his arrogant independence, how they made 

 melancholy the memory of other and better-known 

 cottages, with the hens on the floor, and the calf in 

 the corner, and, for the cultured growth of the roses, 

 the wild tangle of the briar, the idle glory of the 

 golden ragwort. 



The political discussion wore on to its close, with 

 fair hearing, with arguments from father and son, 

 bewildering in their remoteness from the point at 

 issue, with the vials of the Revelation emptied 

 irrelevantly forth in chapter and verse, with that ready 

 belief in an opponent's honesty that makes the strength 

 and the weakness of England. 



The old farmer heaved himself on to his legs to 

 see us to the garden gate, the socialistic son pressed 

 tracts into our hands, the tired pony of the canvasser 

 was turned for home, and the clatter of the tea-things 

 told that the arrested activities of the housewife had 

 been resumed. The heat, that had been stupefying 

 throughout the fervent day, lingered in the roads and 

 hedgerows ; clean women, with pale, respectable faces, 

 sat among the flowers at the cottage doors and 

 breathed the warm breeze; the Conservative blue or 

 the Liberal orange placarded the windows that their 

 hands had made so bright, but there, it appeared, 

 their political opinions found their single outlet. 

 They regarded with pessimistic resignation the pre- 

 occupation of their lords with these matters, the blue 

 or the orange. Colonel Jones or Mr. Smith. Theirs it 

 was to fill in, stitch by stitch, the political designs, 

 sketched by Colonel Jones or Mr. Smith, and sanc- 

 tioned by their lords in those long ale-house sympo- 

 siums which they accepted as the inevitable vehicle 

 of politics. Upon them, in their daily labours, fell 



