“Well, a man who gets rich by that trade may be all very well in some ways, but he is blind as to what workingmen want; I could not in my conscience send him up to make the laws. I dare say they’ll be angry, but every man must do what he thinks to be the best for his country.”

On the morning before the election, Jerry was putting me into the shafts, when Dolly came into the yard sobbing and crying, with her little blue frock and white pinafore spattered all over with mud.

“Why, Dolly, what is the matter?”

“Those naughty boys,” she sobbed, “have thrown the dirt all over me, and called me a little raga⁠—raga⁠—”

“They called her a little ‘blue’ ragamuffin, father,” said Harry, who ran in looking very angry, “but I have given it to them; they won’t insult my sister again. I have given them a thrashing they will remember; a set of cowardly, rascally ‘orange’ blackguards.”