The American Senator | Page 4

and to have
kept safely the five or six thousand pounds which his father had left
him. And his farming was well done; for though he was, out-and-out, a
gentleman-farmer, he knew how to get the full worth in work done for
the fourteen shillings a week which he paid to his labourers,--a
deficiency in which knowledge is the cause why gentlemen in general
find farming so expensive an amusement. He was a handsome,
good-looking man of about thirty, and would have been a happy man
had he not been too ambitious in his aspirations after gentry. He had
been at school for three years at Cheltenham College, which, together
with his money and appearance and undoubted freehold property,
should, he thought, have made his position quite secure to him; but,
though he sometimes called young Hampton of Hampton Wick
"Hampton," and the son of the rector of Dillsborough "Mainwaring,"

and always called the rich young brewers from Norrington
"Botsey,"--partners in the well-known firm of Billbrook & Botsey; and
though they in return called him "Larry" and admitted the intimacy,
still he did not get into their houses. And Lord Rufford, when he came
into the neighbourhood, never asked him to dine at the Bush.
And--worst of all,--some of the sporting men and others in the
neighbourhood, who decidedly were not gentlemen, also called him
"Larry." Mr. Runciman always did so. Twenty or twenty-five years ago
Runciman had been his father's special friend, before the house had
been built and before the days at Cheltenham College. Remembering
this Lawrence was too good a fellow to rebuke Runciman; but to
younger men of that class he would sometimes make himself
objectionable. There was another keeper of hunting stables, a younger
man, named Stubbings, living at Stanton Corner, a great hunting
rendezvous about four miles from Dillsborough; and not long since
Twentyman had threatened to lay his whip across Stubbings' shoulders
if Stubbings ever called him "Larry" again. Stubbings, who was a little
man and rode races, only laughed at Mr. Twentyman who was six feet
high, and told the story round to all the hunt. Mr. Twentyman was more
laughed at than perhaps he deserved. A man should not have his
Christian name used by every Tom and Dick without his sanction. But
the difficulty is one to which men in the position of Mr. Lawrence
Twentyman are often subject.
Those whom I have named, together with Mr. Mainwaring the rector,
and Mr. Surtees his curate, made up the very sparse aristocracy of
Dillsborough. The Hamptons of Hampton Wick were Ufford men, and
belonged, rather to Norrington than Dillsborough. The Botseys, also
from Norrington, were members of the U.R.U., or Ufford and Rufford
United Hunt Club; but they did not much affect Dillsborough as a town.
Mr. Mainwaring, who has been mentioned, lived in another brick house
behind the church, the old parsonage of St. John's. There was also a
Mrs. Mainwaring, but she was an invalid. Their family consisted of one
son, who was at Brasenose at this time. He always had a horse during
the Christmas vacation, and if rumour did not belie him, kept two or
three up at Oxford. Mr. Surtees, the curate, lived in lodgings in the
town. He was a painstaking, clever, young man, with aspirations in

church matters, which were always being checked by his rector. Quieta
non movere was the motto by which the rector governed his life, and he
certainly was not at all the man to allow his curate to drive him into
activity.
Such, at the time of our story, was the little town of Dillsborough.


CHAPTER II
The Morton Family
I can hardly describe accurately the exact position of the Masters
family without first telling all that I know about the Morton family; and
it is absolutely essential that the reader should know all the Masters
family intimately. Mr. Masters, as I have said in the last chapter, was
the attorney in Dillsborough, and the Mortons had been for centuries
past the squires of Bragton.
I need not take the reader back farther than old Reginald Morton. He
had come to the throne of his family as a young man, and had sat upon
it for more than half a century. He had been a squire of the old times,
having no inclination for London seasons, never wishing to keep up a
second house, quite content with his position as quire of Bragton, but
with considerable pride about him as to that position. He had always
liked to have his house full, and had hated petty oeconomies. He had
for many years hunted the county at his own expense, the amusement at
first not having been so expensive as it afterwards became. When he
began the work, it had