CAPTAIN AYLMER MEETS HIS CONSTITUENTS
On the first evening of their visit Captain Aylmer
was very attentive to his aunt. He was quite
alive to the propriety of such attentions, and to
their expediency; and Clara was amused as she watched
him while he sat by her side, by the hour together,
answering little questions and making little remarks
suited to the temperament of the old lady’s
mind. She, herself, was hardly called upon to
join in the conversation on that evening, and as she
sat and listened, she could not but think that Will
Belton would have been less adroit, but that he would
also have been more straightforward. And yet
why should not Captain Aylmer talk to his mat?
Will Belton would also have talked to his aunt if he
had one, but then he would have talked his own talk,
and not his aunt’s talk. Clara could hardly
make up her mind whether Captain Aylmer was or was
not a sincere man. On the following day Aylmer
was out all the morning, paying visits among his constituents,
and at three o’clock he was to make his speech
in the town-hall. Special places in the gallery
were to be kept for Mrs Winterfield and her niece,
and the old woman was quite resolved that she would
be there. As the day advanced she became very
fidgety, and at length she was quite alive to the perils
of having to climb up the town-hall stairs; but she
persevered, and at ten minutes before three she was
seated in her place.
‘I suppose they will begin with prayer,’
she said to Clara. Clara, who knew nothing of
the manner in which things were done at such meetings,
said that she supposed so. A town councillor’s
wife who sat on the other side of Mrs Winterfield
here took the liberty of explaining that as the captain
was going to talk politics there would be no prayers.
‘But they have prayers in the Houses of Parliament,’
said Mrs Winterfield, with much anger. To this
the town councillor’s wife, who was almost silenced
by the great lady’s wrath, said that indeed she
did not know. After this Mrs Winterfield continued
to hope for the best, till the platform was filled
and the proceedings had commenced. Then she declared
the present men of Perivale to be a godless set, and
expressed herself very sorry that her nephew had ever
had anything to do with them. ‘No good
can come of it, my dear,’ she said. Clara
from the beginning had feared that no good would come
of her aunt’s visit to the town-hall.
The business was put on foot at once, and with some
little flourishing at the commencement, Captain Aylmer
made his speech the same speech which we have all
heard and read so often, specially adapted to the
meridian of Perivale. He was a Conservative, and
of course he told his hearers that a good time was
coming; that he and his family were really about to
buckle themselves to the work, and that Perivale would
hear things that would surprise it. The malt
