 article of yours on me. They tell me in the
office that you are the writer. Pray don't Commander me so much. - It 's not
customary, and I object to it.«
    »Certainly, certainly,« Timothy acquiesced.
    »And for the future, Mr. Turbot, please to be good enough not to allude in
print to any of my performances here and there. Your intentions are
complimentary, but it happens that I don't like a public patting on the back.«
    »No, and that 's true,« said Timothy.
    His appreciative and sympathetic agreement with these sharp strictures on
the article brought Beauchamp to a stop.
    Timothy waited for him; then, smoothing his prickly cheek, remarked: »If I
'd guessed your errand, Commander Beauchamp, I 'd have called in the barber
before I came down, just to make myself decent for a first introduction.«
    Beauchamp was not insensible to the slyness of the poke at him. »You see, I
come to the borough unknown to it, and as quietly as possible, and I want to be
taken as a politician,« he continued, for the sake of showing that he had
sufficient to say to account for his hasty and peremptory summons of the writer
of that article to his presence. »It 's excessively disagreeable to have one's
family lugged into notice in a newspaper - especially if they are of different
politics. I feel it.«
    »All would, sir,« said Timothy.
    »Then why the deuce did you do it?«
    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
