"Don't you think it would be a joke, Lord Saltoun, to see my brother
and his merry men, with their bows and bills, marching down to
Somerset all in Lincoln green instead of Lincoln and Bennet hats?"
"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.
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