It made her blood boil to think of Robert and Albert in their exile. Robert had now been released from gaol, and had been sent by a charitable society to Australia. Reuben had refused to move a hand to help him. As for Albert, a few months ago a piteous letter had arrived, begging for money. He had, through Mr. Hedges, found work on a small Radical paper which soon came to grief, and since then had been practically starving, having had no success as a freelance. A friend of his wanted to start a weekly reviewTory this time, for Albert's politics were subservient to occasionand only required funds. Did Reuben feel prepared to make an investment? Thus poor Albert cloaked and trimmed his begging.
He compared his present feelings with the miserable humiliation he had endured in '65. Queer!that election seemed almost as real and vivid to him as this one, andhe did not know whyhe found himself feeling as if it were more important. His mind recaptured the details with startling clearnessthe crowd in the market-place, the fight with Coalbran, the sheep's entrails that were flung about ... and suddenly, sitting there in his arm-chair, he found himself muttering: "that hemmed g?ate!"However, there was no help for it. Reuben was overjoyed, and once more she slipped under his tyranny. This time she found it irksome, his watchfulness was a nuisance, his anxiety was absurd. However, she did not complain. She was too timid, and too fond of him."Yes, in a cunning, brutish sort of waylike a gorilla when he's set his heart on a particular cocoanut. Boarzell's his cocoanut, and he's done some smart things to get itand in one way at least he's above the gorilla, for he can enslave other people of superior intelligence to sweat under his orders for what they care nothing about."
TWO:"Then, my lord archbishop," said Oakley, rising, "if a hair of that monk's head is touched, I will not answer for the result. Wat Tyler, my lords, is a man of desperate purpose. He has sworn before the multitude, that, if the prophet is not freed before the twenty-four hours, the heads of all these noble peers around me shall answer for it.Nay more"
THREE:"Oh, ma'am, ma'amif ever you cud help me get[Pg 171] freeif ever ... oh, II'd sarve you all my lifeI'd"
"Ah," said the youth in the open-work socks approvingly. "That's very like an episode in 'Meryon's House,' you knowthat glorious scene in which Jennifer the Prostitute goes down to the New Forest with Meryon and suddenly begins dancing in a glade.""Butas experience has taught youthey won't. You can see now what your slave-driving's brought you toyou've lost your slaves.""Who wur the fust?""Of course, being a prostitute, she'd be closer to Nature than a respectable person."