After a hasty round of the Committee Rooms I returned to our hostelry, the Cathedral Arms, where, after disposing of two reporters who wanted an advance copy of my evening's speech, and having effusively thanked a pompous individual for a sheaf of statistics on a subject which I cannot recall, but in which no one outside an asylum could have reasonably been expected to take any interest whatever, and which I was at liberty to quote (with due acknowledgments) to any extent I pleased, I sat down with Champion and Robin, faint yet pursuing, to fortify myself with roast-beef and whisky for the labours of the evening.

Presently Kitty entered, with Dolly.

"Who do you think has just arrived?" she said.

"I don't know. Not a deputation, I hope!"

"No. Gerald—from school."

"Great Scott! Expelled?"

"Oh no. It's his half-term exeat. I had forgotten all about it. As it just falls in with the Election, he has come to see you through, he says."

"Right! Give him some food and a bed, and we'll send him round with one of the brakes to-morrow, to bring people up to the poll. He has a gentle compelling way about him that should be useful to us. Has he brought his inarticulate friend?"

"Yes."

"Well, tell them to ask at the office for bedrooms."

"They have done that already," said Dolly. "They are down in the kitchen now, ordering dinner. They don't propose to go to the meeting. 'Better fun outside,' they say."

"Lucky little devils!" remarked the Candidate, with feeling.

"And, Adrian," said Kitty, "I don't think I'll come either. I'm rather bothered about Philly."

I laid down my knife and fork.

"What do you mean? Is she really ill?"

"N-no. I don't think so, but she is very feverish and wretched, poor kiddy. I tried to get hold of Dr Martin this afternoon, but he was miles away on an urgent case, and won't be back till to-morrow. But I got Dr Farquharson——"

"Roaring Radical!" said I in horror-struck tones.

—"Yes, dear, but such a nice old thing; and Scotch too, Robin——"

"Aberdonian," said Robin dubiously.

"Well," continued my wife, "he said she would need care, and must stay in bed. He was in a tearing hurry, as he had to go on to one of Stridge's meetings—horrid creature!—but he promised to come again on his way home. Do you think it very important that I should come with you?"

I turned to my secretary.

"What's your opinion, Robin?"

"I think Mrs Inglethwaite should come. They like to see her on the platform, I know."

"If the Candidate's wife does not appear, people say she is too grand for them," put in Champion.

"I'll stay with Philly, Kit," said Dolly.

"Will you? You dear! But I know you want to come yourself."

"Never mind. It doesn't matter."

And so it was arranged.

We found the theatre packed to suffocation. A heated band of musicians (whose degrees must have been conferred honoris causa) had just concluded a set of airs whose sole excuse for existence was their patriotic character, and Sir Thomas Wurzel (of Heycocks) was rising to his feet, when our party appeared on the platform. Election fever was running high by this time; the critical spirit was almost entirely obliterated by a truly human desire to cut the preliminaries and hit somebody in the eye; and we were greeted with deafening cheers.

Presently Champion was introduced and called upon to speak. He was personally unknown to the crowd before him, although his name was familiar to them. But in five minutes he had the entire audience in his grip. He made them laugh, and he made them cheer; he made them breathe hard, and he made them chuckle. There were moments when the vast throng sat in death-like silence, while Champion, with his voice dropped almost to a whisper, cajoled them as a woman cajoles a man. Then suddenly he would blare out another battle-call, and provoke a great storm of cheering. He made little use of gesture—occasionally he punctuated a remark with an impressive forefinger, but he had the most wonderful voice I have ever heard. I sat and watched him with whole-hearted admiration. It is true that he was not doing our cause any particular good. He had forgotten that he was there to make a party speech, to decry his opponents, and crack up his friends. He was soaring away into other regions, and—most wonderful of all—he was taking his audience with him. He besought them to be men, to play the game, to think straight, to awaken to a sense of responsibility, and to remember the magnitude and responsibility of their task as controllers of an Empire. He breathed into them for a moment a portion of his own great spirit; and many a small tradesman and dull-souled artisan realised that night, for the first (and possibly the last) time, that the summit of the Universe is not composed of hides and tallow, and that there are higher things than the loaves and fishes of party politics and the petty triumphs of a contested election.

From a strictly tactical point of view all this was useless, and therefore dangerous. But for a brief twenty minutes we were gods, Utopians, Olympians, joyously planning out a scheme of things as they should be, to the entire oblivion of things as they are. That is always worth something.

Then he sat down, and we came to earth again with a bump, recollecting guiltily the cause for which we were assembled and met together—namely, the overwhelming of an Italian warehouseman and the retention of a parliamentary seat in an unimportant provincial district.

Once only have I heard that speech bettered, and that was in the House of Commons on a night in June fifteen years later, when a Prime Minister started up from the Treasury Bench to defend a colleague whose Bill—since recognised as one of the most statesmanlike measures of our generation—was being submitted to the narrowest and meanest canons of party criticism. It was another appeal for fair-play, unbiassed judgment, and breadth of view, and it took a hostile and captious House, Government and Opposition alike, by storm. The name of the Prime Minister on that occasion was John Champion, and the colleague whom he defended was Robert Chalmers Fordyce.

After Champion had sat down—nominally his speech was a vote of confidence in my unworthy self—Robin rose to second the motion. I did not envy him his task. It is an ungrateful business at the best, firing off squibs directly after a shower of meteors. Even a second shower of meteors would be rather a failure under the circumstances. Robin realised this. He put something into his pocket and told his audience a couple of stories—dry, pawky, Scottish yarns—which he admitted were not new, not true, and not particularly relevant. The first was a scurrilous anecdote concerning a man from Paisley,—which illustrious township, by the way, appears to be the target of practically all Scottish humour,—and the other treated of a Highland minister who was delivering to a long-suffering congregation a discourse upon the Minor Prophets. Robin told us how the preacher worked through Obadiah, Ezekiel, Nahum, Malachi, "and many others whose names are doubtless equally familiar to you, gentlemen," he added amid chuckles, "placing them in a kind of ecclesiastical order of merit as he proceeded; and finally he came to Habakkuk.

"'What place, my friends, what place will we assign to Habakkuk?' he roared.

"That, gentlemen," said Robin, "proved to be the last straw. A man rose up under the gallery.

"'Ye can pit him doon here in my seat,' he roared. 'I'm awa' hame!'

"Gentlemen," added Robin, as the shout of laughter subsided, "I fear that one of you will be for offering his seat to Habakkuk if I go on any longer, so I will just second the motion and sit down."

After that I rose to my weary feet and offered my contribution. I have no intention of giving a precis of my speech here. It was exactly the same as all the speeches ever delivered on such occasions. Thucydides could have written it down word for word without ever having heard me deliver it. It was not in the least a good speech, but it was the sort of speech they expected, and, better still, it was the sort of speech they wanted. Everybody was too excited to be critical, and I sat down, perspiring and thankful, amid enthusiasm.

Then came the most trying ordeal of all—questions.

I am no hand at repartee; but practice had sharpened my faculties in this direction, and I had, moreover, become fairly conversant with the type of query to which the seeker after knowledge on these occasions usually confines himself. The great secret is to bear in mind the fact that what people want in one's reply is not accurate information—unless, of course, you are standing for a Scottish constituency, and then Heaven help you!—but something smart. If you can answer the question, do so; but in any case answer it in such a way as to make the questioner feel small. Then you will have your audience with you.

To prevent unseemly shouting (and, entre nous, to give the Candidate a little more time to polish up his impromptus), the questions were handed up on slips of paper and read aloud, and answered seriatim. They were sorted and arranged for me by Robin, and I not infrequently found, among the various slips, a question usually coming directly after a regular poser, in Robin's handwriting, with a brilliant and telling reply thoughtfully appended.

This evening as usual Robin collected the slips from the stewards, and ultimately laid them on the table before me. I rose, and started on the heap. The first was a typewritten document which had been handed up by a thoughtful-looking gentleman in the front row. It contained a single line—

Are you a Liberal or a Conservative?

This was a trifle hard, I thought, coming directly after my speech; but fortunately the audience considered it merely funny, and roared when I remarked pathetically, "This gentleman is evidently deaf."

Then came the question—

Are you in favour of Woman's Suffrage?

This was no novelty, and was fortunately regarded by the gallant electors present as a form of comic relief. I adopted my usual plan under the circumstances, and said—

"I am in favour, sir, of giving a woman whatever she wants. It is always well to make a virtue of necessity."

This homely and non-committal gibe satisfied most of the audience, and I was about to proceed to the next question when my interlocutor, a litigious-looking man with blue spectacles, rose in the circle and cried—

"You are evading the question, sir! Give me an answer. Are you in favour of Woman's Suffrage or not?"

"That's fair! Give him his answer!" came the cry from the fickle audience.

I was quite prepared for this. I went through an oft-rehearsed and not uneffective piece of pantomime with Kitty, and replied—

"Well, sir, I have just inquired of my wife, who is by my side——"

I paused expectantly. I was not disappointed. There were loud cheers, during which I seized the opportunity to glance through the next few questions. Then, as I was not quite ready—

"—As she has always been, all through this arduous campaign——"

Terrific enthusiasm, while Kitty blushes and bows very prettily; after which the conversation proceeds on the following lines:—

Myself. And she tells me that she does not want any Suffrage of any kind whatsoever!

"Hear, hear!" But some cries of disapproval.

Myself. I therefore recommend you, sir, to go home and follow my example——

(Perfect tornado of laughter. Apparently I have made a home-thrust.)

—And after that, if you will come back to me and report the result of your—er—investigations—(yells)—I shall be happy to go into the matter with you more fully.

Triumphant cheers, and the blue-spectacled man collapses.

The unfortunate espouser of the cause of the fair having thus been derided out of court, I took up the next question. It concerned a long-standing dispute as to the rights of the clergy of various denominations to enter the local Board Schools,—this was in the days far preceding the present educational deadlock,—and I felt that I must walk warily. I talked at large about liberty of conscience and religious toleration, but realised as I rambled on that my moderate views and want of bigotry in one direction or the other were pleasing no one. John Bull is a curious creature. You may get drunk and beat your wife, and he will tolerate you; you may run amok through most of the Decalogue, and he will still be your friend; but venture to worship your Maker in a fashion which differs one tittle from his own, and he will put down his pint-pot or desist from sanding the sugar and fell you to the earth. I was glad to get away from this subject, leaving the audience far from satisfied, and turn to the next question. It said—

Is the Candidate aware that the important township of Spratling is entirely without a pier or jetty of any description?

"Certainly I am aware of it," I replied, trying hard to remember where the place was. The audience began to titter, and I felt uneasy.

My questioner, a saturnine gentleman in the pit, rose to his feet and continued—

"And if returned to Parliament, will you exert your influence to see that a jetty is constructed there at the earliest opportunity?"

"Cer——" There was a very slight movement beside me. Robin was leaning back unconcernedly in his chair, but on the table under my nose lay a sheet of paper bearing these words in large printed capitals—

SPRATLING IS TEN MILES FROM THE SEA!

It had been a near thing.

"Certainly," I continued. "On one condition only," I added at the top of my voice, above the rising tide of mocking laughter,—"on condition that you, sir, will personally guarantee a continuous and efficient service of fast steamers between Spratling and—the sea-coast!"

It was not a brilliant effort. I think I could have made more of it if I had had more time. But it served. How they laughed!

But there were breakers ahead. The next question asked if I was in favour of compulsory land purchase and small holdings. Of course I was not; but if I said so I knew I should rouse a dangerous storm, for the community were much bitten at the time with the "Vine and Fig-tree Fetish," as some one had happily described it. If, on the other hand, I said Yes, I should, besides telling a lie,—though, as Cash once remarked to me, "You can't strain at gnats on polling-day,"—be committing myself to a scheme, which I knew Stridge had been strongly urging, for dividing up some of the estate of the Lord of the Manor, the Earl of Carbolton (whom I knew personally for one of the wisest and most considerate landlords in the country) into allotments for the benefit of an industrial population who probably thought that turnips grew on trees. It would have been easy to make some easily broken promise, but I have my poor pride, and I never offer the most academic blessing to a measure that I am not prepared to go into a Lobby for. I wanted time to think. Perhaps Robin would slip something on to the table. I accordingly played my usual card, and said—

"Now this, gentleman, is an important question, and I am very glad it has been asked." (Oh, Adrian, my boy!) "And when I am faced with such a question, I always ask myself, 'What, under the circumstances, would be the course of action of—our great leader?'"

The device succeeded, and the theatre resounded with frenzied cheers. I turned to Robin. He was not there.

I swung round in Kitty's direction. She had left her chair, and was hurriedly making her way through the group of important nobodies behind me in the direction of the wings. Robin was there already, in earnest conversation with a girl.

It was Dolly.

Phillis?



CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

"TO DIE—WILL BE AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE!"

—Peter Pan.

Two minutes later we were driving back to the Cathedral Arms. It was snowing heavily, but I never noticed the fact. Neither did I realise that I had abandoned my post at a critical and dangerous moment, and left my friends on the platform to explain to a puzzled and angry audience why the Candidate had run away without answering their questions. But there are deeper things than politics.

Phillis, we learned from Dolly, had been attacked by violent pains early in the evening; and about nine o'clock there had been a sudden rise of temperature, with slight delirium, followed by a complete and alarming collapse. Dr Farquharson had been sent for, hot-foot, from Stridge's platform, and his first proceeding had been to summon me from mine.

He was waiting for us in the hall of the hotel when we arrived, and Kitty and I took him into our sitting-room and, parent-like, begged to be told "the worst."

The doctor—a dour and deliberate Scot—declined to be positive, but "doubted" it might be perityphlitis. "Appendicitis is a more fashionable term," he added. The child had rallied, but was very ill, and nothing more could be done at present except keep her warm and afford relief by means of poultices and fomentations until the malady should take a definite turn for the better or the worse.

"In either case we shall know what to do then," he said; "but for the present the bairn must just fight her own battle. Has she good health, as a rule?"

Yes, thank God! she had. Physically she was frail enough, but she possessed a tough little constitution. After I had taken a peep into the room where the poor child, a vision of tumbled hair and wide bright eyes, lay moaning and tossing, I left Kitty and Dolly and the doctor to do what they could for her, and went downstairs to take counsel with my friends.

Now that the first shock was past, my head was clear again, and my course lay plain before me. Downstairs I found Robin, Champion, and Cash silently taking supper.

"Now, gentlemen," I said, when I had answered Robin's anxious inquiries—I believe he loved the child almost as much as I did—"this misfortune has come at a bad time; but one thing is quite plain, and that is that I must go through with the election. I quite see that I am not my own master at present."

Cash looked immensely relieved. Evidently he had been afraid that I would throw up the sponge. Robin and Champion nodded a grave assent, and the latter said—

"You are right, Adrian. It's the only thing to do."

"That's true," said Cash. "I am sure you have our deepest sympathy, Mr Inglethwaite, but we can't possibly let you off on any account."

It was not a very happy way of putting it, but Cash was an election agent first and a man afterwards.

"It was bad enough your running away from the meeting to-night," he continued, in tones which he tried vainly to keep from sounding reproachful. "They'd have torn the benches up if Mr Fordyce hadn't let 'em have it straight. I'm afraid it will cost us votes to-morrow."

All this grated a good deal. I could hear Robin begin to breathe through his nose, and I knew that sign. I broke in—

"What did you say to them, Robin?"

"Say? I don't really know. I assured them that you must have some good reason for leaving in such a hurry, and persuaded them to keep quiet for a bit in case you came back. We put up a few more speakers, but the people got more and more out of hand; and finally, after about five minutes of Dubberley, they grew so riotous that we ended the meeting."

"They had every excuse," said I. "They considered themselves defrauded."

"So they were," said Cash.

"Of course, if they had known," said Champion, "they would have gone home like lambs."

"Somehow," said Robin, "I wish they could have been told, Adrian. I should have liked fine to explain to them that you didn't leave the meeting just because you couldn't answer that last question."

"By gum!" Cash had been striving to deliver himself for some time. "Mr Inglethwaite," he said excitedly, "they must be told at once! We can get more good out of your little girl's illness than fifty meetings would do us. You know what the British public are! I'll circulate the real reason of your departure from the meeting first thing to-morrow morning, and half the wobblers in the place will vote for you out of sheer kind-heartedness. I know 'em!"

The exemplary creature almost smacked his lips.

There was a tense silence all round the table. Then I said, with some heat—

"Mr Cash, I have delivered myself into your hands, body and soul, ever since Nomination Day, and I have obeyed you to the letter all through this campaign. But—I am not going to allow a sick child's sufferings to be employed as a political asset to-morrow."

There was a sympathetic growl from the other two.

"Oh, we shouldn't do it as publicly as all that," said the unabashed Cash. "Trust me! No ostentation; just an explanatory report circulated in a subdued sort of way—and perhaps a strip of tan-bark down on the road outside the hotel—eh? I know how to do it. It'll pay, I tell you. And there'll be no publicity——"

I laid my head upon the table and groaned. For three weeks I had had perhaps four hours' sleep a-night, and I had been worked down to my last reserve of energy, keeping in hand just enough to meet all the probable contingencies of to-morrow's election. Dialectics with Cash as to the market value of a little girl's illness had not been included in the estimate. I groaned.

Champion answered for me.

"Mr Cash, don't you see how painful these proposals are to Mr Inglethwaite? Put such ideas out of your head once and for all. No man worthy of the name would accept votes won in such a way."

There was a confirmatory rumble from Robin.

"We can't have ad misericordiam appeals here, Mr Cash," he said.

Champion continued briskly—

"Now, Mr Cash, we will get Mr Inglethwaite a drink and send him to bed. He has not had a decent night's rest for a fortnight. We trust to you not to talk of the child's illness to anybody,—that is the only way to avoid making capital of it,—and if you will call here to-morrow after breakfast I will guarantee that your Candidate will be fit and ready to go round the polling-booths with you, and"—he put his hand on my shoulder—"set an example to all of us."

Cash, completely pulverised, departed as bidden, desolated over this renunciation of eleemosynary votes; and Robin, Champion, and I finished our supper in peace,—if one can call it peace when there is no peace.

Champion was leaving by the night mail, for he had promised to address a meeting two hundred miles away next day. His cab was already at the door, and we said good-bye to him on the hotel steps.

He shook hands with me in silence, and turned to Robin.

"Three fingers, and not too much soda, and then put him straight to bed," he commanded.

Then he turned to me again.

"Don't sit up and worry, old man," he said. "Go to bed, anyhow. The doctor and your womenfolk will do all that can be done. Your duties commence to-morrow. Keep your tail up, and face it out. Noblesse oblige, you know. Good-night."

He drove away, and Robin and I returned to the sitting-room.

Robin mixed me a stiff whisky-and-soda.

"Champion's prescription," he said. "Down with it!"

I obeyed listlessly.

"Now come along upstairs with me. You are going to bed. I want to turn you out a first-class Candidate in the morning—not a boiled owl."

His cheery masterfulness had its effect, and I suddenly felt a man again.

"Never fear!" I said. "I shall go through with it right enough—the whole business—unless—unless—Robin, old man, supposing—supposing——"

"Blethers!" said Robin hastily. "She'll be much better in the morning. Here's your room. Good-night!"

He shepherded me into my bedroom, shut the door on me, and tiptoed away.

I really made a determined effort to go to bed. I actually lay down and covered myself up, but sleep I could not. After an hour of conscientious endeavour I rose, inspired with a new idea.

The doctor had straitly forbidden me to enter Phillis's room; but opening out of it was the apartment that was used as her nursery. There would be a fire there: I would spend the rest of the night on a sofa in front of it.

I looked at my watch. It was one o'clock. I took a candle, walked softly down the passage, and let myself quietly into the nursery. The door leading into Phillis's room was ajar, and a slight smell of some drug or disinfectant assailed my sharpened senses.

The room was in darkness, except that a good fire burned in the grate. A silent figure rose up from before it at my entrance.

It was Robin. Somehow I was not in the least surprised to see him there.

"Come along," he said softly. "I was expecting you."

* * * * *

We sat there for the rest of the long night. The house was very still, but every quarter of an hour the Cathedral chimes across the Close—our rooms lay in a quiet wing of the hotel, which formed a hollow square with the Cathedral, Chapter-house, and Canonries—furnished a musical break in the silence. So tensely mechanical does one's brain become under such circumstances, that presently I found myself anticipating the exact moment when the next quarter would strike; and I remember feeling quite disappointed and irritable if, when I said to myself "Now!" the chime did not ring out for another fifteen seconds or so. Truly, at three o'clock on a sleepless morning the grasshopper is a burden.

Once Robin rose softly to his feet and turned towards the door of Phillis's room. I had not heard any one move there, but when I looked round Dolly was standing on the threshold. She was wrapped in a kimono,—I remember its exact colour and pattern to this day, and the curious manner in which the heraldic-looking animals embroidered upon it winked at me in the firelight,—and she held an incongruous-looking coal-scuttle in her hand. It was not by any means empty, but she handed it to Robin with a little nod of authority and vanished again.

I looked listlessly at Robin, wondering what he was to do with the coal-scuttle. He began to cut a newspaper into strips, after which he picked suitable lumps of coal out of the scuttle and tied them up into neat little paper packets, half a dozen of which he presently handed through the door to Dolly. I suppose she placed them noiselessly on the fire in Phillis's room, but we heard no sound.

It was a bitterly cold night, and outside the snow was lying thick; so Robin busied himself with preparing other little packets of coal, and at intervals throughout the long night he passed them through the door to the tireless Dolly.

Various sounds came from within. Occasionally the child suffered spasms of pain, and we could hear her crying. Then all-wise Nature would grant the sorely tried little body a rest at the expense of the mind that ruled it, and poor Phillis would drop into a sort of rambling delirium, through which we perforce accompanied her. At one time she would be wandering through some Elysian field of her own; we heard her calling her mates and proposing all manner of attractive games. (Even "Beckoning" was included. Once I distinctly heard her "choose" me.) But more often she was in deadly fear. Her solitary little spirit was too plainly beset by those nameless ghosts that haunt the borderland separating the realms of Death from those of his brother Sleep. Once her voice rose to a scream.

"Uncle Robin! It's the Kelpie! Stop it! It's coming—it's breaving on me! Uncle Robin! oh——!"

I looked at Robin. He was sitting gripping the arms of his chair, with every muscle in his body rigid; and I knew that he, like myself, was praying God to strike down the cowardly devil that would torment a child.

Then I heard, for the first time that night, the soothing murmur of Kitty's voice.

"It's all right, dearie. Mother is holding you fast. It shan't hurt you. There, it's running away now, isn't it? See!"

Kitty's tones would have lightened the torments of the Pit, and Phillis's cries presently died down to an uneasy whisper. After a sudden and curiously pathetic little outburst of singing,—chiefly a jumble of scraps from such old favourites as "Onward, Christian Sailors!"—there was silence again, and the Cathedral chimed out half-past four.

Shortly after this the doctor came out of the room with a message from Kitty that I ought to be in bed. Evidently Dolly had told her about me.

"How is she now, doctor?" I whispered, disregarding the command.

"Up and down, up and down. She is making a brave fight of it, poor lassie, but we can do little at present except stand by and give relief when the bad fits come."

"May I go in and see her?"

"No, no! You could do no good, and she might be frightened if she caught sight of a large dim figure in the dark. Leave it to the women, and thank God for them. Hark!"

Phillis was back in Elysium again.

"Who's been eating my porridge?" said a gruff little voice. Then came a rapturous shriek. Evidently the Little Bear had caught Curly Locks in his bed. We sat listening, while the game ended and another followed in its place. Suddenly she began to sing again—

"Then three times round went that gallant ship, And three times round went she; Then three times round went that gallant ship, And—sank—to the—bottom of the sea—ea—ee—"

There was a little wailing rallentando, and silence.

"Philly, Philly, don't!" It was the only time that night that Kitty gave any sign of breaking down. The doctor hurried back into the room. The clock struck five.

* * * * *

After that there was a very long silence. It must have lasted nearly an hour. Then Dolly tiptoed out to us.

"She's asleep," she whispered. "He says she's a shade better. I want another coal-packet."

She took what Robin gave her, and faded away.

After that I think we dozed in our chairs. The next thing I remember was a knock at the outer door. I opened my heavy eyes and stirred my stiff joints. The Boots put his head in, and I realised it was daylight.

"Half-past eight, sir. Mr Cash is waiting downstairs. Poll's been open half an hour, he says."



CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

TWO BATTLES.

Before I left the hotel I struck a bargain with Cash. I would go anywhere and do anything, but he was to give me a written itinerary of my movements for the day, clearly stating where I should be at various times. This document I left in the hands of Dolly, who promised faithfully to send for me, if—if necessary.

Then, putting my paternal instincts into my pocket, I braced myself up and plunged into the vortex of polling-day.

Truly, if Time is the healer, Work is the anesthetic. In the turmoil of the crowded streets and polling-booths, I found myself almost as enthusiastic and whole-hearted as if no little girl of mine were fighting for life in a darkened room not many streets away. I shook hands with countless folk, I addressed meetings of the unwashed at street corners, and received the plaudits or execrations of the multitude with equal serenity.

Robin hastened away to the Hide-and-Tallow Works, whence, during the dinner-hour, he charmed many an oleaginous elector to come and plump for Inglethwaite, the Man Whom He Knew and Who Knew Him. Gerald and Donkin, smothered in violets and primroses, were personally conducting a sort of tumbril, which dashed across my field of vision from time to time, sometimes full, sometimes empty, but always at full gallop.

Election "incidents" were plentiful. I was standing in the principal polling-station at one time, when a gentleman called Hoppett, a cobbler by persuasion—I think I have already mentioned him as the benignant individual who used to come to the door of his establishment and pursue me with curses down the street—came out from recording his vote. He did not see me, but caught sight of Robin, who had just arrived with a posse of electors, and was standing by the Returning Officer's table. Hobbling up, the cobbler shook a gnarled fist under my secretary's nose.

"I've voted against your man," he shouted. "We're goin' to be rid of the lot of you this time. Set of reskils!... I've put my mark against Stridge, I have; and against Inglethwaite's name I've put a picture of a big boot—one of my own making, too! The big boot!" he screamed ecstatically—"that's what your man is a-going to get to-day. Set of——"

Robin smiled benignantly upon him, and glanced at the Returning Officer.

"You hear what this gentleman says?" he remarked.

"I do," replied the official.

"Is it not a fact that he has annulled his vote by making unnecessary marks on his voting-paper?" continued Robin solemnly.

"That is so," assented the Returning Officer. "I'm afraid your vote won't count this time, Mr Hoppett. Good morning!"

There was a roar of delighted laughter from friend and foe, and the fermenting Hoppett was cast forth.

I succeeded in getting back to the hotel for ten minutes at luncheon-time. Dolly met me—pale, sleepless, but unbeaten.

"The doctor is with her just now," she said. "She has been in fearful pain, poor kiddy; but he has given her a drug of some sort, and she is easier now."

"Couldn't I see her, just a moment?" I said wistfully.

"The answer to that question, sir," replied Dolly, "is in the negative."

We both smiled resolutely at this familiar tag, and Dolly concluded—

"Kitty is lying down. I made her. But she is going to get up when they—I mean——"

I detected a curious confusion in her voice.

"When what?" I asked.

"Nothing."

I surveyed my sister-in-law uneasily

"Are they expecting—a crisis, then?"

"Yes—a sort of a one."

"When?"

Dolly seemed to consider.

"About five," she said.

"Hadn't I better be near, in case——?"

"Where are you to be this afternoon?"

"Hunnable."

Dolly nodded her head reflectively.

"When can you be back?" she asked.

"I can do it by five, I should think."

"That will be soon enough. The doctor said that if—you were wanted, it would be about then. Good-bye, old gentleman!"

"Good-bye, Dolly! Mind you go to bed." (We seem to have spent a large portion of that twenty-four hours urging each other to go to bed.)

Then I went back to work.

Polling had been brisk during the dinner-hour, and both Cash and Robin considered that we were doing fairly well. Things would be slack at Stoneleigh itself during the afternoon, and the obvious and politic course now was to drive over to the fishing village of Hunnable—I had only time for one, and this was the most considerable—and catch my marine constituents as they emerged from the ocean, Proteus-like, between three and four o'clock.

I did so, and for the space of an hour and a half I solicited the patronage of innumerable tarry mariners, until their horny hands had filled up the voting-papers and my own smelt to heaven of fish. It was a quarter to five, and dark, before I escaped from the attentions of a small but pertinacious group of inquirers who wanted to understand my exact attitude on the question of trawling within the three-mile limit, and proceeded at a hand-gallop back to Stoneleigh. (That odoriferous but popular vehicle, the motor-car, was still in the preceded-by-a-man-ten-yards-in-front-bearing-a-red-flag stage in those days, and we had to rely on that antiquated but much more reliable medium of transport, the horse.) The snow lay very heavily in places, and our progress was not over-rapid. Moreover, passing the central Committee Rooms on my way to the hotel, I was stopped and haled within to conciliate various wobblers, and another twenty minutes of precious time sped. But I stuck to my determination to let nothing interfere with duty that day, and I argued with free-thinkers and pump-handled bemused supporters until all was settled and Cash said I might go.

Still, it was nearer six than five when my panting horses drew up at the Cathedral Arms.

There was no Dolly to receive me this time, but at the top of the stairs leading to our rooms I met the doctor. He was accompanied by a grey-haired, kind-eyed old gentleman in a frock-coat, with "London Specialist" written all over him. It was Sir James Fordyce.

"Well?" I asked feverishly as I shook hands.

The two men motioned me into the sitting-room, and Farquharson said, in a curiously uncertain fashion—

"Mr Inglethwaite, we have done a thing which should not, properly, have been done without your consent. Your secretary suggested the idea, and I agreed. Mrs Inglethwaite made a point of our saying nothing to you, and volunteered to take all responsibility on herself. She said you were not to be worried. So I wired for Sir James——"

"I see," I said, "and he operated?"

"Yes, at three o'clock this afternoon. Indeed, your sister-in-law, I think, purposely concealed from you——"

"She did." That, then, was the "crisis" that Dolly had in her mind, and that, too, was why she had told me to come back at five—when everything would be well over!

I continued—

"And how have you—I mean—is she——?"

"The operation," said the old man, "was entirely successful, and, as it turned out, most necessary. But of course for so young a patient the strain was terrible."

"How is she?"

"She came through finely, but I do not conceal from you the fact that her life hangs by a thread."

I had a premonition that something was going to be "broken" to me. I dropped into a chair, and waited dully. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder, and Sir James continued—

"Just weakness, you understand! Her exhaustion when she came out of the chloroform was extreme, but every moment now is in our favour. Children have such extraordinary recuperative power."

He was speaking in the usual cheery tones of the bedside optimist. I raised my head.

"Tell me straight, Sir James—will the child live?"

The old man's grip on my shoulder tightened just for a moment, and when he spoke it was in an entirely unprofessional voice.

"Thanks to two of the bravest and most devoted of women," he said, "I think she will."

I dropped my head into my hands.

"Please God!" I murmured brokenly.

"Of course," he continued, "anything may happen yet. But the way in which she has been cared for by my good friend here——"

"No, no," said Farquharson. "Give the credit to those that deserve it. I just afforded ordinary professional assistance. It was your wife and her sister, Mr Inglethwaite, that pulled the child through. She has had tight hold of a hand of one of them ever since ten o'clock last night."

"Yes," said Sir James; "I think it will be found that their nursing has just made the difference. You had better give him something, Farquharson."

In truth I needed something, though up to this point I had not realised the fact. Farquharson gave me a draught out of a little glass, which sent a steadying glow all through me, and presently I was able to shake hands, dumbly and mechanically, with the great surgeon, who, I found, was bidding me good-bye; for the world is full of sick folk, and their champion may not stay to see the issue of one battle before he must hurry off to fight another.

They left me to myself, while Farquharson went down to the door with Sir James. Presently he returned.

"I must be getting back to the patient shortly," he said. "The next hour or so will be very critical. The nurse is here, and I have sent the ladies to bed. But you may go in for a look, if you like. I am going out for exactly ten minutes."

"I see—a breather. You deserve it."

"Not exactly. I'm going to vote—for Stridge!"

He chuckled in a marvellously cheering way, and left me.

As I approached Phillis's room the door opened, and I was confronted with that most soothing and comforting of sights to a sick man—a nurse's uniform. She was a pleasant-faced girl, I remember, and she was carrying a basin full of sponges and water, cruelly tinged.

"Just a peep!" she said, with that little air of motherly sternness which all women, however young, adopt towards fractious children and helpless males.

She closed the door very softly upon me, and left me alone.

For a moment I stood uncertain in the shadow of the screen that guarded the door. There was a whiff of chloroform in the air, and through the doorway leading to the room where we had sat throughout the previous night I could see the end of a white-covered table. Thank God, that part of the business was over!

A shaded lamp burned at Phillis's bedside. She lay deathly still, an attenuated little derelict amid an ocean of white bed-clothes.

At first I thought I was alone with the child, and was moving softly forward when I became suddenly aware that some one was kneeling at the far side of the bed. It was Kitty. Evidently she had not obeyed the doctor's orders about going to bed.

A single ray from the lamp fell upon her face. Her eyes were wide open, and she seemed to be looking straight at me. Her lips were moving, and I became aware that she was speaking, very earnestly and almost inaudibly.

I stood still to hear her. Then I realised that her words were not addressed to me. Very carefully I stepped back to the door-handle, turned it, and slipped out.



CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

"QUI PERD, GAGNE."

Once more I was back in the thick of it all, and till the closing of the poll at eight o'clock I strove, in company with Cash, Robin, and others, to direct the inclinations of my constituents into the proper channels.

The tumult increased as the evening advanced. More snow had fallen during the afternoon, and outlying electors were being conveyed to the scene of action with the utmost difficulty. People were voting at seven o'clock who had intended to get it done and be home by six; and as time wore on it was seen that there would be a desperate rush of business right up till closing time.

Every one was in high spirits. That potent factor in British politics, the electioneering egg, had been entirely superseded by the snowball, and the youth of Stoneleigh, massed in the public square outside the Town Hall, were engaged, with a lofty indifference to party distinctions that would have been sublime if it had not been so painful, in an untrammelled bombardment of all who crossed their path.

At length the Cathedral chimed out the hour of eight, and the poll closed. Cash hurried up to me.

"It's going to be a desperately close thing," he said. "The counting will begin at once, in the Mayor's room on the first floor of the Town Hall. The outlying boxes should be in by half-past nine at the latest, and the result should be out by about eleven. You'll come and watch the counting, I suppose."

But there are limits to human endurance.

"Mr Cash," I said, buttoning my overcoat up to my ears as a preliminary to an encounter with the budding statesmen outside, "I think I have got to the end of my day's work. Nothing can affect the result now, and I'm going home—that's flat. Good-night!"

"Surely you're coming to hear the result announced," wailed Cash. "There's the vote of thanks to the Returning Officer. You'll have to propose that—or second it," he added grimly.

"Well, I'll see. But I think, now that the poll is closed, that my duty lies elsewhere," I said. "If I am really wanted, send word by Mr Fordyce."

Five minutes later, and I was once more at the Cathedral Arms. The ground floor of that hostelry hummed like a hive, and the bar and smoking-room were filled to overflowing with supporters of both sides, who were prudently avoiding all risk of disappointment by celebrating the result of the election in advance.

I pushed my way through a group of enthusiastic patriots—many of them in that condition once described to me by a sporting curate as "holding two or three firkins apiece"—who crowded round me, fired with a desire to drink success to the British Constitution—a rash shibboleth, by the way, for gentlemen in their situation to attempt to enunciate at all—at my expense, and hastened upstairs to our wing.

In the passage I met the nurse. She greeted me with a little smile; but I was mistrustful of professional cheerfulness that night.

"Will you tell Mrs Inglethwaite or Miss Rubislaw that I have come in, please?" I said, and turned into the sitting-room.

The sight of a snug room or a bright fire or a colossal arm-chair is always comforting to a weary man, even though his thoughts admit of little rest. I sank down amid these comforts, and closed my eyes. Now that my long day's play-acting was over, and nothing mattered any more, I began to realise how great the strain had been. I was utterly done. I had no clear recollection of having tasted food since breakfast, but I was not hungry. All I wanted was to be left in peace. Even the sickening anxiety about Phillis had died down to a sort of dull ache. In a few minutes a too-wakeful mind struggled with an exhausted body. I wondered dimly when somebody would come and tell me how Philly was. Perhaps——

I fell asleep.

I was awakened by the consciousness of a second presence in my arm-chair, which was a roomy one of the saddle-bag variety. It was Kitty. Presently I became aware that she was crying, softly, as women usually do,—men gulp noisily, because they have lost control of themselves, and children wail, chiefly to attract attention,—but so softly on this occasion that I knew she was trying to avoid disturbing me.

It had happened, then.

Well, obviously, this was one of the rare occasions upon which a husband can be of some use to his wife. I sat up, and made a clumsy effort at a caress.

"We've still got each other," I said, rather brokenly.

Kitty positively laughed.

"Adrian, you don't understand. Philly roused up for a few minutes about eight o'clock,—very piano, poor mite, but almost herself,—and then dropped off into a beautiful sleep, bless her! The doctor has gone home and left the nurse in charge. He says things should be all right now. Oh, Adrian, Adrian!"

And my wife sobbed afresh.

"Then what the—what on earth are you crying for?" I demanded.

"I don't know, dear," said Kitty, without making any attempt to stop. "I'm so happy!"

Really, women are the most extraordinary creatures. Here was I, after the labour and anxiety of the last twenty-four hours, ready to shout for joy. I was no longer tired: I felt as if my day's work had never been. I wanted to sing—to dance—to give three cheers in a whisper. And my wife, after giving me a very bad fright, was sitting celebrating our victory by a flood of tears and other phenomena usually attributed by the masculine mind to unfathomable woe. It was all very perplexing, and I felt a trifle ill-used; but I suppose it was one of the things that mark the difference between a man and a woman.

After that we sat long and comfortably. Our conversation need not be set down here, for it has no bearing on this chronicle.

Finally we looked at the clock, and then at each other.

"We must have been sitting here a long time," I said. "I wonder where the others are."

"By the way," said Kitty, "Dilly and Dicky have arrived. Robin and Dolly wired for them this morning. They may be upstairs any moment. They were having supper in the coffee-room when last I saw them." She patted her hair. "Do I look an awful fright?"

I turned in the restricted space at my command and surveyed her.

"Do my eyes look wet?" she inquired, feeling in my pocket for my handkerchief.

Kitty has large grey eyes. Once, during the most desperate period of our courtship, I referred to them as "twin lakes"—an indiscretion which their owner, in her less generous moments, still casts up to me. But to-night the territory surrounding them presented a distinct appearance of inundation. I continued to gaze. I thought of last night's ceaseless vigil and to-day's long-drawn battle. My wife had borne the brunt of all, and I had grudged her a few tears! My heart smote me.

"Kit!" I said suddenly; "poor Kit!"...

We were interrupted by the opening of the door and the entrance of what I at first took to be a chimney-sweep's apprentice, but which proved to be my brother-in-law, with evidence of electoral strenuousness written thick upon him.

"Hallo, you two!" he remarked genially. Then, noticing our unconventional economy of sitting-space—"Sorry! I didn't know. I thought you'd given up that sort of thing years ago!"

I rose and shook myself.

"Come in, my son," I said.

"Righto!" replied Gerald. Then he addressed himself to a figure which, with true delicacy of feeling, had shrunk back into the passage outside.

"Come in, Moke, old man. I've got them separated now!"

The discreet Master Donkin sidled respectfully in at the door, and Gerald continued.

"Moke and I would like to say how pleased we are to hear about Phillis," he said, rather awkwardly for him. "We have just got to hear how really bad she's been."

The resolution was seconded by a confirmatory mumble from Master Donkin.

"We met the nurse just now," continued Gerald, "and she told us about the operation, and all that. It must have been a pretty thick day for you, Adrian. And you're looking pretty rotten, too, Kitty," he added with brotherly directness. "But do you people know what time it is? Half-past eleven, nearly. The result should be out any minute. Aren't you coming to the Town Hall? They'll want you to make a speech, or get egged, or something."

I looked at my watch.

"Well, there's no particular reason why I shouldn't go—now," I said. "What do you say, Kitty? Hark! What's that?"

"That's the result, I expect," said my brother-in-law.

We drew up the blind and opened the window. The moon was shining brightly, and threw the monstrous shadow of the Cathedral very blackly upon the untrodden snow of the peaceful Close. Through the clear night air came the sound of frenzied cheering.

"That's it, right enough," said Gerald. "I wonder if you've got the chuck, my bonny boy."

"Ugh! It is cold! Come in," said Kitty.

We shut the window, drew down the blind, returned to the fire, and waited. Dolly joined us now, and Kitty vanished to sit by Phillis. We waited on. Somehow it never occurred to us to send downstairs for news. I suppose there are times when the human craving for sensation is sated. We sat and waited.

At last the door opened, and, as I expected, Robin entered. He looked like a man who has not been to bed for a week. He shut the door softly behind him—evidently he feared he might be entering a house of mourning—and surveyed us for a moment without speaking. I knew what was in his mind. Then he said—

"We have lost."

I stood up.

"On the contrary," I replied, "we have won."

In a bound Robin was on the hearth-rug, gripping my hand with his. (His other had somehow got hold of one of Dolly's, and I remember wondering if he was hurting her as much as me.)

"You mean it?" he roared.

"I do. She is sleeping like a lamb."

"Oh, man, I'm just glad! What does anything matter after that?"

Then we sat down and smiled upon each other largely and vacuously. We were all a little unstrung that night, I think. After all, it seems rather unreasonable to lavish one's time, labour, and money on an electoral contest, and then laugh when you lose, and say it doesn't matter, just because a child isn't going to die. Oh, I am glad Mr Cash was not there!

"But I must tell you what happened when the result was read out," said Robin. "It was a near thing—a majority of twenty-seven. (I don't think it is worth while to ask for a recount: everything was done very carefully.) When the figures went up there was the usual hullabaloo——"

"We heard it, thanks," said Gerald.

"And presently Stridge stepped out on to the balcony and bowed his acknowledgments. There was a lot more yelling and horn-blowing, and then they began to cry out for Inglethwaite."

"Naturally. Yes?"

"They were quiet at last, and Stridge got his speech in. He talked the usual blethers about having struck a blow that night that would ring through England,—just what you would have had to say if you had got in, in fact,—and then he went on, the old sumph, to say that for reasons best known to himself his honourable opponent had seen fit to withhold his presence from them that night, and he begged leave to add that he considered that a man, even though he knew he was going to be beaten, ought to have the pluck to come and face the music."

"Mangy bounder!" remarked my brother-in-law dispassionately.

"Oh, I was just raging!" continued Robin. "The people of course yelled themselves hoarse; and Stridge was going on to rub it into you, when I stepped on to the balcony beside him—I had been standing just inside the window—and I put my hand on Stridge's fat shoulder and I pulled him back a wee thing, and I roared—

"'Gentlemen, will you not let me say a word for Mr Inglethwaite?'"

Dolly's eyes began to blaze, and I saw her lips part in anticipation.

"There was a tremendous uproar then," Robin went on with relish. "The folk howled to Stridge to put me over the balcony——"

"I wish he had tried!" said Gerald with simple fervour.

"And other folk cried to me to go on. They knew there must be some explanation of your absence. I just stood there and let them roar. Inside the room there was a fine commotion; and with the tail of my eye I could see Cash hurrying round explaining to them what I wanted to say. (He has his points, Cash!) Then at last, as the noise got worse and worse, I put my mouth to Stridge's ear and bellowed that he would regret it all his life if he didn't let me say what I had to say, and that he would be grateful to me afterwards, and all that. He is a decent old buffer, really, and he was evidently impressed with what I said——"

"I should like to know exactly what you did say, Robin," I interpolated.

"Never mind just now. Anyhow, he turned and clambered back into the room, and left me with the crowd. They were soon quiet, and I just told them."

Robin leaned back in his chair.

"Told them what?" came from all parts of the room.

But Robin had become suddenly and maddeningly Caledonian again.

"I just told them about Philly," he said. "What else could I do? It wasn't like telling them during the election. That would have been an appeal to the gallery for votes. This was just common justice to you. Anyhow, they quite quietened down after that."

And that was all the report that its author ever gave us of a speech which, in the space of four minutes, turned a half-maddened election mob into a silent, a sympathetic, and (I heard afterwards) a deeply moved body of sober human beings.

"What happened next?" asked Kitty, who had rejoined us. (Phillis was still sleeping sweetly, she said.)

"After that I hauled old Stridge on to the balcony again and gave him a congratulatory hand-shake, coram populo, on your behalf. Then I retired and slipped out by a back way and came here. Stridge was in full eruption again when I left——"

Dolly held up her hand.

"What is that curious noise?" she said.

"It's outside," said Kitty.

Gerald went to the window and lifted the blind. Then he turned to us.

"I say," he said in an unusual voice, "come here a minute."

We drew up the blind and surveyed the scene before us.

Two minutes before the moon had shone upon an untrodden expanse of snow. Now the Close was black with people. There must have been two or three thousand. They stood there in the gleaming moonlight, silent, motionless, like an army of phantoms. At their head and forefront—I could see the moonlight glitter on his watch-chain, which lay in a most favourable position for lunar reflection—stood the newly elected Member for Stoneleigh, Mr Alderman Stridge.

Simultaneously there was a knock at the door, and the hall-porter of the hotel appeared.

"Mr Stridge's compliments, sir, and he would like to have a word with you."

"Go down quickly, Adrian," said Kitty anxiously. "They'll wake Philly!"

I descended without a word, and passed out into the Close from a French window on the ground floor.

I glanced up in the direction of our rooms and noticed that my party were standing on the balcony outside the sitting-room. I could see Kitty's anxious face. But she need have had no fear.

Mr Stridge advanced towards me, silk hat in hand. Behind him stood a variety of Stoneleigh worthies, and I had time to notice that the group was composed of an indiscriminate mixture of friends and foes.

"Mr Inglethwaite, sir," said Stridge, "I should like to shake you by the hand."

He did so, as did a few of those immediately around us, in perfect silence. I wondered what was coming.

"That is all, sir," said Stridge simply, and not without a certain dignity. "We shall move off now. We did you a wrong to-night, and we all of us"—he indicated the motionless multitude with a sweep of his hand—"agreed to come here in silence, just for a moment, as an indication of our sympathy and—respect."

I was unable to speak, which was not altogether surprising. There was something overwhelming about the dumb kindness of it all,—three thousand excited folk holding themselves in for fear of disturbing a sick child,—and I merely shook Stridge's hand again.

However, I found my voice at last.

"Mr Stridge," I said, "there is only one thing I will say in response to your kindness, but I think it is the one thing most calculated to reward you all for it. To-night my little girl's illness took a favourable turn. She is now fast asleep, and practically out of danger."

I saw a great ripple pass over the crowd, like a breeze over a cornfield, as the news sped from mouth to mouth. Both Stridge's great hands were on my shoulders.

"Good lad!" he said. "Good lad!"

He patted my shoulders again, and then, as if struck by a sudden idea, he turned and whispered a direction to his lieutenants. I overheard the words "Market Square," and "A good half mile away." Once more the wave passed over the cornfield, and without a sound the great concourse turned to the left and streamed away over the trampled snow, leaving me standing bareheaded on the steps of the French window, almost directly below the spot where the unconscious little object of all this consideration lay fast asleep.

I returned to the group on the balcony. They had heard most of the conversation, and Kitty was unaffectedly dabbing her eyes.

"Well, let us get in out of the cold," I said, suddenly cheerful and brisk. "I want my supper."

"Wait a moment," said Robin, "I don't think everything is quite over yet. What is that? Listen!"

From the direction of the Market Square came the shouts of a great multitude. Cheer upon cheer floated up to the starry heavens. The roars that had greeted the declaration of the poll were nothing to these. There was a united ring about them that had been lacking in the others. It was like one whole-hearted many-headed giant letting off steam.

"A-a-h!" said Kitty.



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

IN WHICH ALL'S RIGHT WITH THE WORLD.

After that we became suddenly conscious of our bodily wants, and clamoured for supper.

It was long after midnight, and most of the hotel servants had gone to bed. But one waiter of political leanings, who had been an enthusiastic witness of the proceedings in the Close, stood by us nobly. He laid a table in the sitting-room. He materialised a cold turkey, a brown loaf, and some tomatoes; and he even achieved table-napkins. Gerald and Donkin on their part disappeared into the nether regions, and returned bearing mince-pies and cider. Some one else found champagne and opened it; and in a quarter of an hour we were left to ourselves by the benignant waiter round a comfortably loaded table, in a snug room with the fire burning and the curtains drawn.

It was an eccentric kind of meal, for every one was overflowing with a sort of reactionary hilarity; and everybody called everybody else "old man" or "my dear," and I was compelled to manipulate my food with my left hand owing to the fact that my wife insisted on clinging tightly to my right. The only times I got a really satisfactory mouthful were when she slipped out of the room to see how her daughter was sleeping.

As the meal progressed, I began to note the exceedingly domestic and intimate manner in which we were seated round the table, which was small and circular. Kitty and I sat together; then, on our right, came Dicky and Dilly, then Gerald and Donkin, each partially obscured from view by a bottle of cider about the size of an Indian club; and Dolly and Robin completed the circle.

The party comported themselves variously. Kitty and I said little. We were utterly tired and dumbly thankful, and had no desire to contribute greatly to the conversation; but we turned and looked at one another in a contented sort of way at times. Dicky and Dilly were still sufficiently newly married to be more or less independent of other people's society, and they kept up a continuous undercurrent of lover-like confidences and playful nothings all the time. Gerald, upon whom solid food seemed to have the effect that undiluted alcohol has upon ordinary folk, was stentoriously engaged with Mr Donkin in what a student of Paley's Evidences would have described as "A Contest of Opposite Improbabilities" concerning his election experiences.

Lastly, I turned to Dolly and Robin. Dolly's splendid vitality has stood her in good stead during the last twenty-four hours, and this, combined with the present flood-tide of joyous relief, made it hard to believe that she had spent a day and a night of labour and anxiety. She was much more silent than usual, but her face was flushed and happy, and somehow I was reminded of the time when I had watched her greeting the dawn on the morning after Dilly's wedding. Robin, with the look of a man who has a hard day's work behind him, a full meal inside him, and a sound night's sleep before him—and what three greater blessings could a man ask for himself?—sat beside her, smiling largely and restfully on the company around him.

Suddenly Dicky made an announcement.

"There is one more bottle," he said. "Come on, let's buzz it!"

He opened the champagne in a highly professional manner and filled up our glasses. Gerald and Donkin declined, but helped themselves to fresh jorums of cider.

Then there was a little pause, and we all felt that some one ought to make a speech or propose a toast.

"Shall we drink some healths?" proposed Dilly.

There was a chorus of assent.

"We will each propose one," I said, "right round the table in turn. Ladies first! Yours, Kitty? I suppose it will be Philly—eh?"

Kitty nodded.

"Ladies and gentlemen," I announced, "you are asked to drink to the speedy recovery of Miss Phillis Inglethwaite. This toast is proposed by her mother, and seconded by her father."

The toast was drunk with all sincerity, but soberly, as befitted.

"Now, Dilly," I said, when we were ready again.

Dilly whispered something to her husband, which was received by that gentleman with a modest and deprecatory cough, coupled with an urgent request that his wife would chuck it.

"He won't announce my toast for me," explained Dilly, turning to us—"he's too shy, poor dear!—so I'll do it myself. Ladies and gentlemen, the toast is—Dicky!"

Dicky's health was drunk with cheers and laughter, and Dilly completed its subject's confusion by kissing him.

"Now, Dolly!" said every one.

"Not yet!" said Dolly. "Gerald and Moke are the next pair. Gerald must act lady, and think of a toast."

Master Gerald, hastily bolting a solid mass of mince-pie—one could almost follow the course of its descent—cheerfully complied.

"All right," he said; "I think I'll drink the health of old Moke himself. He's not much to look at, but he's a good sort. I shan't kiss him, though, Dilly. And," he added, "I think he had better drink mine too. He looks thirsty. Come on, sonny—no heeltaps!"

He elaborately linked arms with the now comatose Donkin, and each thereupon absorbed, without drawing breath, about a pint of cider apiece. After that, with a passing admonition to his friend not to burst, my brother-in-law returned to his repast.

So far, the toasts had all been of a most conventional and inevitable character. Now, automatically but a little tactlessly, we all turned to see what Dolly and Robin were going to do. From the standpoint of the last two toasts they were certainly in a rather delicate position.

"Come on, you two!" commanded Gerald. "Do something! Make a spring!"

Robin took up his glass of champagne and turned rather inquiringly to Dolly.

Without a word she linked her arm in his, and they drank together.

"Oh, come, I say, that's not fair! Whose health were you drinking, Robin, old man?" inquired the tactless Dicky.

"I was drinking to the future Mrs Fordyce—whoever she may be!" said Robin, obviously apologetic at being unable to think of anything more sparkling.

"Whose health were you drinking, Dolly?" yelled Gerald, with much enjoyment.

Then Dolly did a startling thing.

Robin's hand lay resting on the table beside her. Into it she deliberately slipped, her own; and then gazed—flushed and defiant, but proud and smiling—round a circle composed entirely of faces belonging to people suffering from the gapes.

I glanced at Robin. He looked perfectly dumfounded, but I saw his hand close automatically round Dolly's fingers, and I saw, too, her pink nails go white under the pressure.

But Dolly seemed to feel no pain. On the contrary, she continued to smile upon us. Then, bowing her head quickly, before any of us realised what she would be at, she lightly kissed the great hand which imprisoned her own. Then she looked up again, with glistening eyes.

"There!" she said. "Now you know!"

Our breath came back, and the spellbound silence was broken.

"Dolly!" said Kitty.

"My dear!" said Dilly.

"What—ho!" drawled Dicky.

But it was Gerald who rounded off the situation. He was standing on the table by this time.

"Three cheers for Dolly and Robin!" he roared.

We gave them, with full throats. (Fortunately we were a long way from Phillis's room.)

After that we all sat down again, feeling a little awkward, as people do when they have taken the lid off their private feelings for a moment. Finally Kitty led off with—

"But, Dolly, dear, why didn't you tell us? When was it?"

"I didn't tell you before," said Dolly composedly, "because it has only just happened—this moment."

"Only this moment? But——"

"Do you mean to say he hasn't asked you? Oh——"

"Are you asking him?"

The questions came simultaneously from all parts of the table; horribly inquisitive, some of them; but then the thing had been so frankly and deliberately done, that we knew Dolly wanted to explain everything to us there and then.

"I'll tell you," said Dolly, after silence had been restored by the fact that Gerald had shouted us all down and then stopped himself. "Robin told me—well—something, six months ago, the night after Dilly's wedding, at the dance——"

"That was why you locked the door, then," I said involuntarily.

Both Robin and Dolly turned upon me in real amazement. But I saw that this side-issue would interrupt the story.

"Never mind!" I said. "Go on! I'll explain afterwards."

"Well," continued Dolly, "he said to me—may I tell them, Robin?" She turned to the man beside her with a pretty air of deference. Robin, who up to this point had sat like a graven image, inclined his head, and Dolly proceeded—

"I have never told anybody about this—except Dilly, of course."

"I've got the letter still," said Dilly.

"Robin told me," Dolly went on, "that he wasn't going to ask me to marry him at present, because he had some childish idea—it is perfectly idiotic to think of; but—he thought he wasn't quite—well, good enough for me!"

"What rot!" said Dicky.

"Muck!" observed Gerald.

"But he said that he would ask me properly later on, as soon as he considered that he was good enough," continued Dolly. "And as he still seems to think," she concluded with more animation, "that he is not quite up to standard, it occurred to me to-night, as we were all here in a jolly little party, to notify him that he is. So I did. That's all. Robin, you are hurting my hand!"

Robin relaxed his grip at last, and remorsefully surveyed the bloodless fingers that lay in his palm. Then, with a rather shamefaced look all round the table, as much as to say—"I should like fine to restrain myself from doing this before you all, but I can't!"—he bent his head and kissed them in his turn.

And that was how Robin and Dolly plighted their troth at last—openly, without shame, and for all to see.

* * * * *

Robin and I lingered at the turning of a passage, lit only by our two flickering bedroom candles.

"Well, we can't complain of having had an uneventful day," I said.

"I'm sorry we didn't scrape other twenty-eight votes," said Robin characteristically.

"Never mind!" I said. "I shall be none the worse of a holiday for a year or two. If you will kindly take Dolly off our hands as quickly as possible"—he caught his breath at that—"Kitty and I and Phillis will go a trip round the world together. Then I'll come home and fight a by-election, perhaps."

"Meanwhile," said Robin, "you will be having no further need of a private secretary."

"I'm afraid not," I said. The fact had been tugging at my conscience for the last two hours. "And that raises another question. What are you two going to live on?"

"Champion wants me," said Robin. "He has offered me the post of Secretary to that Royal Commission of which he has been appointed Chairman. It is a fine opening."

"I should think it was!" I said with whole-hearted joy. "Good luck to you, Robin!"

"Thank you!" said Robin. "Still," he added, as he turned to go, "I wish I could have found you twenty-eight more votes."

"Between ourselves," I said, "I don't mind very much. I am not the right man for this constituency. It has outgrown me. I have not the knack of handling a big crowd. What I want is a fine old crusted unprogressive seat, where I shan't constantly be compelled to drop my departmental work and rush down to propitiate my supporters with untruthful harangues. I'm a square peg here. Now, if they had wanted a really fit and proper candidate for this Parliamentary Division, Robin, they ought to have approached you."

"Och!" said Robin carelessly, "they did—a month ago! Good night!"



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

A PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY.

An old woman in a white mutch stands at the door of a farmhouse in a Scottish glen. Her face is wrinkled, and her dim eyes are peering down the track which leads from the steading to the pasture. Being apparently unable to focus what she wants to see she adjusts a pair of spectacles.

This action brings into her range of vision a distant figure which is engaged in shepherding a herd of passive but resisting cows through a gap in the dyke. It is a slow business, but the procession gradually nears home; and when the man at the helm succeeds in steering his sauntering charges safely between the Scylla of a hay-rick and the Charybdis of the burn, the old lady takes off her spectacles and relaxes her vigilance.

When she looks again, though, she breaks into an exclamation of dismay. The leaders of the straggling procession have safely reached the door of the byre close by; but one frisky young cow, suddenly swerving through an open gate, breaks away down a sloping field of turnips at a lumbering gallop. The herdsman is out of sight round a bend in the road.

"The feckless body!" observes the old lady bitterly. Then she raises her voice.

"Elspeth!"

A reply comes from within the dairy.

"Ay, mem?"

"You'll need tae leave the butter and help Master Robert. He's no hand with the kye. He's let Heatherbell intill the neeps. And the maister is away at——"

With a muffled "Maircy me!" a heated young woman shoots out of a side door and proceeds at the double to the assistance of the incompetent cow-herd.

At length the animals are rounded up into the byre, and Elspeth proceeds with the milking.

Meanwhile Master Robert, "the feckless body," stands in a rather apprehensive attitude before the old lady. He is a huge man of about forty-five. He is clean-shaven, and he has humorous grey eyes and dark hair. Despite his homespun attire, he looks more like a leader of men than a driver of cattle.

"Robin Fordyce," says the old lady severely, "what garred ye loose Heatherbell in among the neeps.

"I'm sorry, mother. But I met Jean M'Taggart in the road, and—we stopped for a bit crack."

The old lady surveys her son witheringly over her glasses.

"Dandering wi' Jean M'Taggart at your time of life! I'll sort Jean M'Taggart when I see her. It's jist like her tae try and draw a lad from his duty. And you! A married man these fifteen years! 'Deed, and it's time yon lady wife of yours cam' here from London, tae pit a hand on you."

The big man's penitent face lights up with sudden enthusiasm.

"She is coming to-morrow!" he roars exultantly.

"Aye, you may pretend tae be glad! But she shall hear aboot Jean M'Taggart all the same," replies the old lady.

This, of course, is a tremendous joke, and the inquisition is suspended while mother and son chuckle deeply at the idea of Dolly's desperate jealousy. Suddenly Mrs Fordyce breaks off to ask a question.

"Did ye mind tae shut the gate of the west field?"

Robin thinks, and then raises clenched hands to heaven in an agony of remorse.

His mother groans in a resigned sort of way.

"Run!" she says, "or ye'll hae all the sheep oot in the road! Get them back, and I'll no' tell David on ye!"

Her son bounds away down the slope, but a further command pursues him.

"An' come back soon! I'll no' be getting you tae myself over much after—to-morrow!"

She sits down again in her chair outside the door in the afternoon sun; for she is getting infirm now, and cannot stand up for long. With an indulgent sigh she surveys the flying figure of the Right Honourable Sir Robert Chalmers Fordyce, Privy Councillor and Secretary of State, as he frantically endeavours to overtake and head off three staid ewes, who, having strayed through the open gate, have just decided upon a walking excursion to London.

"A good lad!" she murmurs contentedly. "A good lad, and a good son; and dae'n' weel. But—he's no' just David. It was always David that had the heid on him."

* * * * *

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