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"No," answered Old Saltoun, "I don't think it would be a joke.
I think it would be an exceedingly serious and sensible idea."
"Well, I'm jiggered!" cried Harry Fisher, staring at him.
"I said just now it was the first fact you didn't know,
and I should say this is the first joke you didn't see."
"I've seen a good many things in my time," said the old man,
in his rather sour fashion. "I've told a good many lies
in my time, too, and perhaps I've got rather sick of them.
But there are lies and lies, for all that. Gentlemen used to lie
just as schoolboys lie, because they hung together and partly
to help one another out. But I'm damned if I can see why we
should lie for these cosmopolitan cads who only help themselves.
They're not backing us up any more; they're simply crowding us out.
If a man like your brother likes to go into Parliament as a yeoman
or a gentleman or a Jacobite or an Ancient Briton, I should say
it would be a jolly good thing."
In the rather startled silence that followed Horne Fisher sprang
to his feet and all his dreary manner dropped off him.
"I'm ready to do it to-morrow," he cried. "I suppose none of you
fellows would back me up."
Then Harry Fisher showed the finer side of his impetuosity.
He made a sudden movement as if to shake hands.
"You're a sport," he said, "and I'll back you up,
if nobody else will. But we can all back you up, can't we?
I see what Lord Saltoun means, and, of course, he's right.
He's always right."
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