"Get into the car out of the rain," it commanded. "D'ye want to be ill on my hands again? I'll run you down to No. 6. Let Barty 'phone the news to you. Isn't that what he's for?"
Larry was alone in the dining-room of No. 6 when the telephone summoned him. He had eaten nothing since breakfast; his hand shook with cold and excitement, and he could scarcely hold the switch firmly.
"Burke, 1047; Coppinger, 705;" Barty's voice sounded flat and without emotion. "Majority against us, 342. Can you hear? Adverse majority, 342! They've beaten us to babby-rags!" The voice ceased.
Larry said: "All right, old chap. Thanks!" and hung up the receiver.
He returned to the dirty, comfortable old sofa by the fire.
Beaten! and Larry was used to victory. In all his twenty-five years of life, he had never been thwarted. What he wished to do, that he did, in games, in sport, in art. He might have said, with Beatrice: "There was a star danced, and under that was I born!"
The first defeat he could remember was the one he had suffered at Christian's hands, and here he was, turned down again, twice in a month!
"My luck's out!" he said, staring at the flickering, whispering fire, and feeling that ebbing of life which will befall, even at five and twenty, when exhaustion, that has been held at bay by excitement and hope, comes to its own.
The door burst open, and Tishy came swiftly into the room.
"I've just heard!" she said. "Dad got it on the other 'phone. It's a wicked shame and a disgrace! That's what it is!" Her voice was hot with wrath and sympathy; she flung across the room and caught Larry's hand and shook it vehemently. "The fools!" she cried, furiously. "You were too good for them, that's what it was! The dirty, low, common—Oh, there's no words bad enough for them!" Her eyes blazed; she looked exceedingly handsome. She was moved by a perfectly genuine emotion of indignation; Larry was Mangan property, and it was not fitting that the leading family of Cluhir should be defeated.