Altogether the election left a legacy of soreness behind it, apart from
any that was experienced by Hyacinth in person.
"It is the last time I shall let him go to an election," exclaimed his
mother.
"There I think you are going to extremes," said Mrs. Panstreppon; "if
there should be a general election in Mexico I think you might safely let
him go there, but I doubt whether our English politics are suited to the
rough and tumble of an angel-child."
THE IMAGE OF THE LOST SOLE
There were a number of carved stone figures placed at intervals along the
parapets of the old Cathedral; some of them represented angels, others
kings and bishops, and nearly all were in attitudes of pious exaltation
and composure. But one figure, low down on the cold north side of the
building, had neither crown, mitre, not nimbus, and its face was hard and
bitter and downcast; it must be a demon, declared the fat blue pigeons
that roosted and sunned themselves all day on the ledges of the parapet;
but the old belfry jackdaw, who was an authority on ecclesiastical
architecture, said it was a lost soul. And there the matter rested.
One autumn day there fluttered on to the Cathedral roof a slender, sweet-
voiced bird that had wandered away from the bare fields and thinning
hedgerows in search of a winter roosting-place.
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