"We all know that Silverbridge will soon be vacant.

Let me assure your Grace that if it might be consistent with your Grace's plans in other respects to turn your kind countenance towards me, you would find that you would have a supporter than whom none would be more staunch, and perhaps I may say, one who in the House would not be the least useful!" That portion of the Major's speech which referred to the Duke's kind countenance had been learned by heart, and was thrown trippingly off the tongue with a kind of twang.

The Major had perceived that he had not been at once interrupted when he began to open the budget of his political aspirations, and had allowed himself to indulge in pleasing auguries.

"Nothing ask and nothing have," had been adopted as the motto of his life, and more than once he had expressed to Captain Gunner his conviction that,--"By George, if you've only cheek enough, there is nothing you cannot get." On this emergency the Major certainly was not deficient in cheek.

"If I might be allowed to consider myself your Grace's candidate, I should indeed be a happy man," said the Major.
"I think, sir," said the Duke, "that your proposition is the most unbecoming and the most impertinent that ever was addressed to me." The Major's mouth fell, and he stared with all his eyes as he looked up into the Duke's face.