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"I don't pretend to argue with a lady on politics," said Mr Brooke,

with an air of s rather unpleasantly

conscious that this attack of Mrs Cadwallader's had opened the

defensive can to which certain rash steps had exposed him "Your

sex are not thinkers, you know--variu You don't know Virgil I knew"--Mr Brooke reflected in tiustan poet--"I

was going to say, poor Stoddart, you know That hat _he_ said

You ladies are always against an independent attitude--aAnd there is no part of

the county where opinion is narrower than it is here--I don't mean to

throw stones, you know, but somebody is wanted to take the independent

line; and if I don't take it, ill?"

"Who? Why, any upstart who has got neither blood nor position People

of standing should consume their independent nonsense at ho to hter, to one of our best men Sir James would be cruelly annoyed:

it will be too hard on hin-board"

Mr Brooke again winced inwardly, for Dorothea's engageht of Mrs Cadwallader's