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CHAPTER LXXXIV.
"Though it be songe of old and yonge,
That I sholde be to blame,
Theyrs be the charge, that spoke so large
In hurtynge of my name."
--The Not-Browne Mayde.
It was just after the Lords had thrown out the Reform Bill:
that explains how Mr. Cadwallader came to be walking on the
slope of the lawn near the great conservatory at Freshitt Hall,
holding the "Times" in his hands behind him, while he talked
with a trout-fisher's dispassionateness about the prospects
of the country to Sir James Chettam. Mrs. Cadwallader,
the Dowager Lady Chettam, and Celia were sometimes seated on
garden-chairs, sometimes walking to meet little Arthur, who was
being drawn in his chariot, and, as became the infantine Bouddha,
was sheltered by his sacred umbrella with handsome silken fringe.
The ladies also talked politics, though more fitfully.
Mrs. Cadwallader was strong on the intended creation of peers:
she had it for certain from her cousin that Truberry had gone
over to the other side entirely at the instigation of his wife,
who had scented peerages in the air from the very first introduction
of the Reform question, and would sign her soul away to take precedence
of her younger sister, who had married a baronet. Lady Chettam
thought that such conduct was very reprehensible, and remembered
that Mrs.
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