"Yes, Madame Beattie told them to. She'd planned it before she went away, but somehow it fell through. They were to put stickers on the ballot, but at the last the stickers scared them, and they just wrote in your name."
"Lydia," said Jeff, "you're making this up."
"Oh, no, I'm not," said Lydia. "Mr. Choate told me. I knew it was going to happen, but he's just told me how it was. They wrote 'Prisoner Blake' in all kinds of scrawls and skriggles. They didn't know they'd got to write your real name. I call it a joke on Madame Beattie."
To Lydia it looked like a joke on herself also, though a sorry one. She thought it very benevolent of Madame Beattie to have prepared such a dramatic surprise, and that it was definite ill-fortune for Jeff to have missed the full effect of it. But the earth to Lydia was a flare of dazzling roads all leading from Jeff; he might take any one of them.
To Amabel the confusion of voting was a matter of no interest, and Jeff said nothing. Lydia was not sure whether he had even really heard. Then Amabel said if there were going to be speeches she hardly thought she cared for them, and they walked home with her and left her at the door, though not before she had put a kind hand on Jeff's shoulder and told him in that way how grateful she was to him. After she had gone in Jeff, so curious he had to say it before they started to walk away, turned upon Lydia.
"How do you know so much about her?" he began.
"Madame Beattie? We used to talk together," said Lydia demurely.
"You knew her confounded plans?"
"Some of them."
"And never told?"