Timothy drew a lading of air into his lungs.  ’Politics, Commander Beauchamp, involves the doing of lots of disagreeable things to ourselves and our relations; it ’s positive.  I’m a soldier of the Great Campaign:  and who knows it better than I, sir?  It’s climbing the greasy pole for the leg o’ mutton, that makes the mother’s heart ache for the jacket and the nether garments she mended neatly, if she didn’t make them.  Mutton or no mutton, there’s grease for certain!  Since it’s sure we can’t be disconnected from the family, the trick is to turn the misfortune to a profit; and allow me the observation, that an old family, sir, and a high and titled family, is not to be despised for a background of a portrait in naval uniform, with medal and clasps, and some small smoke of powder clearing off over there:—­that’s if we’re to act sagaciously in introducing an unknown candidate to a borough that has a sneaking liking for the kind of person, more honour to it.  I’m a political veteran, sir; I speak from experience.  We must employ our weapons, every one of them, and all off the grindstone.’

‘Very well,’ said Beauchamp.  ’Now understand; you are not in future to employ the weapons, as you call them, that I have objected to.’

Timothy gaped slightly.

‘Whatever you will, but no puffery,’ Beauchamp added.  ’Can I by any means arrest—­purchase—­is it possible, tell me, to lay an embargo—­stop to-day’s issue of the Gazette?’

‘No more—­than the bite of a mad dog,’ Timothy replied, before he had considered upon the monstrous nature of the proposal.

Beauchamp humphed, and tossed his head.  The simile of the dog struck him with intense effect.

‘There’d be a second edition,’ said Timothy, ’and you might buy up that.  But there’ll be a third, and you may buy up that; but there’ll be a fourth and a fifth, and so on ad infinitum, with the advertisement of the sale of the foregoing creating a demand like a rageing thirst in a shipwreck, in Bligh’s boat, in the tropics.  I’m afraid, Com—­Captain Beauchamp, sir, there’s no stopping the Press while the people have an appetite for it—­and a Company’s at the back of it.’

’Pooh, don’t talk to me in that way; all I complain of is the figure you have made of me,’ said Beauchamp, fetching him smartly out of his nonsense; ’and all I ask of you is not to be at it again.  Who would suppose from reading an article like that, that I am a candidate with a single political idea!’

‘An article like that,’ said Timothy, winking, and a little surer of his man now that he suggested his possession of ideas, ’an article like that is the best cloak you can put on a candidate with too many of ’em, Captain Beauchamp.  I’ll tell you, sir; I came, I heard of your candidature, I had your sketch, the pattern of ye, before me, and I was told that Dr. Shrapnel fathered you politically.  There was my brief!  I had to persuade our constituents that you, Commander Beauchamp