"He's clever," laughed Phillips. "I'd enjoy the fight, if I'd only
myself to think of, and life wasn't so short."
The laugh died away and a shadow fell upon his face.
"If I could get a few of the big landlords to come in on my side," he
continued, "it would make all the difference in the world. They're
sensible men, some of them; and the whole thing could be carried out
without injury to any legitimate interest. I could make them see that,
if I could only get them quietly into a corner."
"But they're frightened of me," he added, with a shrug of his broad
shoulders, "and I don't seem to know how to tackle them."
Those drawing-rooms? Might not something of the sort be possible? Not,
perhaps, the sumptuous salon of her imagination, thronged with the fair
and famous, suitably attired. Something, perhaps, more homely, more
immediately attainable. Some of the women dressed, perhaps, a little
dowdily; not all of them young and beautiful. The men wise, perhaps,
rather than persistently witty; a few of them prosy, maybe a trifle
ponderous; but solid and influential.
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