E. B. Browning.
Constance Grey and myself were the last of John Crondall's guests to leave him on that evening of the conference. As soon as we three were alone, Constance turned to Crondall, and said:
"You must expect to have me among your camp followers if I find Aunt Mary can stand the travelling. I dare say there will be little things I can do."
"Things you can do! By George, I should think so!" said Crondall. "I shall look to you to capture the women; and if we get the women, it will surprise me if we don't get the men as well. Besides, don't you fancy I have forgotten your prowess as a speaker in Cape Town and Pretoria. You remember that meeting of your father's, when you saved him from the wrath of Vrow Bischoff? Why, of course, I reckon on you. We'll have special women's meetings."
"And where do I come in?" I asked, with an assumed lightness of tone which was far from expressing my feeling.
"Yes," said Crondall, eying me thoughtfully; "I've been thinking of that."
As he said that, I had a swift vision of myself and my record, as both must have appeared to a man like Crondall, whose whole life had been spent in patriotic effort. The vision was a good corrective for the unworthy shafts of jealousy—for that no doubt they were—which had come to me with John Crondall's references to Constance. I was admitted cordially into the confidences of these people from whom, on my record, I scarcely deserved common courtesy. It was with a distinctly chastened mind that I gave them both some outline of the thoughts and resolutions which had come to me during my evening beside Barebarrow, overlooking sleepy little Tarn Regis.
"It's a kind of national telepathy," said Crondall. "God send it's at work in other counties besides Dorset."
"It had need be," I told them; "for all those that I spoke to in Dorset accepted the German occupation like a thing as absolutely outside their purview as the movements of the planets."
"Yes, they want a lot of stirring, I know; but I believe we shall stir 'em all right. But about your part in the campaign. Of course, I recognize that every one has to earn his living, just as much now as before. But yet I know you'd like to be in this thing, Dick Mordan, and I believe you can help it a lot. What I thought of was this: I shall want a secretary, and want him very badly. He will be the man who will do half my work. On the other hand, I can't pay him much, for every cent of my income will be wanted in the campaign, and a good deal more besides. The thing is, would you tackle it, for the sake of the cause, for a couple of hundred a year? Of course, I should stand all running expenses. What do you think? It's not much of an offer, but it would keep us all together?"