 flowing garments, soaring above the heads of men,
and breathing world-thrilling news through a gracefully-curved trumpet, is in
fact a very old maid, who puckers her silly face by the fireside, and really
does no more than chirp a wrong guess or a lame story into the ear of a
fellow-gossip; all the rest of the work attributed to her is done by the
ordinary working of those passions against which men pray in the Litany, with
the help of a plentiful stupidity against which we have never yet had any
authorised form of prayer.
    When Mr Scales's strong need to make an impressive figure in conversation,
together with his very slight need of any other premise than his own sense of
his wide general knowledge and probable infallibility, led him to specify five
hundred thousand as the lowest admissible amount of Harold Transome's
commercially-acquired fortune, it was not fair to put this down to poor old Miss
Rumour, who had only told Scales that the fortune was considerable. And again,
when the curt Mr Sircome found occasion at Treby to mention the five hundred
thousand as a fact that folks seemed pretty sure about, this expansion of the
butler into folks was entirely due to Mr Sircome's habitual preference for words
which could not be laid hold of or give people a handle over him. It was in this
simple way that the report of Harold Transome's fortune spread and was
magnified, adding much lustre to his opinions in the eyes of Liberals, and
compelling even men of the opposite party to admit that it increased his
eligibility as a member for North Loamshire. It was observed by a sound thinker
in these parts that property was ballast; and when once the aptness of that
metaphor had been perceived, it followed that a man was not fit to navigate the
sea of politics without a great deal of such ballast; and that, rightly
understood, whatever increased the expense of election, inasmuch as it virtually
raised the property qualification, was an unspeakable boon to the country.
    Meanwhile the fortune that was getting larger in the imagination of
constituents was shrinking a little in the imagination of its owner. It was
hardly more than a hundred and fifty thousand; and there were not only the heavy
mortgages to be paid off, but also a large amount of capital was needed in order
to repair the farm-buildings all over the estate, to carry out extensive
draining, and make allowances to incoming tenants, which might remove the
difficulty of newly letting the farms in a time of agricultural depression. The
farms actually tenanted were held by men who had begged hard
