“If you’ll pardon me saying so, sir, I’m for Her Most Gracious,” Big James answered with grave dignity.
Three journeymen, pretending to be busy, were listening with all ears from the other side of a case.
“Oh!” exclaimed Edwin, dashed. “Well, that’s all right!”
He walked straight out, put on his hat, and went to the Bleakridge polling-station and voted Labour defiantly, as though with a personal grievance against the polling-clerk. He had a vote, not as lessee of the business premises, but as his father’s lodger. He despised Labour; he did not care what happened to Labour. In voting for Labour, he seemed to have the same satisfaction as if from pique he had voted against it because its stupidity had incensed him.
Then, instead of returning him to the shop, his legs took him home and upstairs, and he lay down in his own room.
Three.
He was awakened by the presence of some one at his bedside, and the whole of his body protested against the disturbance.
“I couldn’t make you hear with knocking,” said Dr Heve, “so I came into the room.”
“Hello, doctor, is that you?” Edwin sat up, dazed, and with a sensation of large waves passing in slow succession through his head. “I must have dropped asleep.”