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spoilt the effect by a
laugh and a shrug of the shoulders at the end.
VII
    Philip had another year at Cambridge. It became his ambition
to console himself for a third-class degree by taking one of the big
University prizes. Work for this, in the form of a thesis, could be done at
leisure, and without the nerve-racking tension of the examination-room. He
entered for the Albert Historical Prize, and was asked to submit the subject
on which he proposed to write a thesis. He chose “The Political Aspects of
the Industrial Revolution.” After a year of careful work he sent in his
thesis and waited eagerly for the result.
    It came, and he learned that he had got an “honourable mention.” “Your
work was very sound and painstaking,” he was told privately, “but several of
the examiners found it a little tedious. It would have been a good thing if
you had compelled yourself to compress it to two-thirds of its length. The
winning thesis was very short—and also very brilliant.”
    Stella, of course, understood nothing of all this. Neither degrees nor
University Prizes meant anything to her. And in a way, this was a
slight—a very slight consolation.
----

CHAPTER IV
I
    At one of his mother’s dinner-parties Philip met a certain
Sir Charles Maddison, M.P., and this gentle man listened to him with a
patience and sympathy unusual in Mrs. Monsell’s guests, most of whom were
bent on exploding their own carefully prepared bombs of brilliance.
    Sir Charles, however, had a special reason for taking notice of Philip. He
was chairman of the Northern Political Association, and as such was
responsible for providing party candidates for some of the less promising
industrial constituencies between the Irwell and the Tyne. When he heard that
Philip hankered after a political career, and above all, when he learned that
Philip was prepared to put up a thousand pounds at the service of any local
association that chose him as their candidate, he immediately asked him if he
would care to become Member of Parliament for Loamport.
    True there were difficulties, chief among which was a hostile majority of
some eleven thousand votes. “But you have youth,” said Sir Charles,
optimistically, “and Loamport folks like young ‘uns. There’s no knowing what
you might do if you had a try.”
    Philip, torn betwixt the fires of his ambition and his doubts as to his
own capabilities, promised that he would give the matter his earnest
consideration.
II
    Philip had never been to Loamport until the day on which he
delivered his first speech there. Sir Charles Maddison, the local magnate of
those parts had asked him, his mother, and Stella to Loamport Hall for the
week-end, and on the Saturday night of their arrival there was to be a
“monster” political rally at which Sir Charles had arranged for Philip to
speak. It was to be his “début,” as Sir Charles optimistically put it, before
his future constituents. And, since Loamport politics were apt to be
turbulent, the sooner he got into the swing of them the better.
    The huge industrial city, grim enough at any time, was especially grim
upon the first Saturday in December. The train brought them in four hours
from Euston, and as they stepped out on to the platform Sir Charles’s
chauffeur was waiting to drive them through the darkening streets to the
Hall. Even the country-side when they reached it was dour and unbeautiful,
with gaunt chimney-stacks and mining-gear disfiguring the landscape and blur
ring the horizon with smoke. Loamport Hall was a house in sympathy with its
surroundings—gloomy and forbidding, with vast empty gardens and
smoke-stained conservatories.
    “If you get in Parliament for Loamport will you have to live there?” asked
Stella, as they drove up to the porch.
    Philip laughed. “Don’t you trouble about that. I’ve got to get elected
first, and I don’t think I’ve a dog’s chance. Loamport’s one of the hardest