"He looked it!" Mr. Bundercombe declared. "A withered old skunk, if ever there was one! You want a live man to see you through this, Paul. You let me go down and sound Harrison this afternoon. No reason that I can see why we shouldn't use this fellow's address, too, if we can make terms with him."
"Look here!" I said. "Politics over on this side don't admit of such violent changes. My address is in the printer's hands and I've got to stick to it; and Ansell will have to be my agent whatever happens. It isn't all talk that wins these elections. The Walmsleys are well known in the county and we've done a bit for the country during the last hundred years. This other fellow—Horrocks, his name is—has never been near the place before. I grant you he's going to promise a lot of very interesting things, but that's been going on just a little too long. The people have had enough of that sort of thing. I think you'll find they'll put more trust in the little we can promise than in that rigmarole of Harrison's."
Mr. Bundercombe shook his head doubtfully.
"Well," he sighed, "I'm only on the outside edge of this thing yet. I must give it another morning."
We had a pleasant luncheon party, at which Mr. Bundercombe was introduced to some of my supporters, with whom—as he usually did with every one—he soon made himself popular. Eve and I then made our first little effort at canvassing. Eve's methods differed from her father's.
"I am so sorry," she said as she shook hands with a very influential but very doubtful voter of the farmer class, "but I don't know anything about English politics; so I can't talk to you about it as I'd like to. But you know I am going to marry Mr. Walmsley and come to live here, and it would be so nice to feel that all my friends had voted for him. If you have a few minutes to spare, Mr. Brown, would you please tell me just where you don't agree with Paul? I should so much like to hear, because he tells me that if once you were on his side he would feel almost comfortable."
Mr. Brown, who had always met my advances with a grim taciturnity that made conversation exceedingly difficult, proceeded to dissertate upon one or two of the vexed questions of the day. I ventured to put in a few words now and then, and after a time he invited us in to tea. When we left he was more gracious than I had ever known him to be.
"And you must vote for Mr. Walmsley!" Eve declared at the end of her little speech of thanks, "because I want so much to have you come and take tea with me on the Terrace at the House of Commons—and I can't unless Paul is a member, can I?"
"Bribery and corruption!" Mr. Brown laughed. "However, we'll see. Certainly I have been very much pleased to hear Mr. Walmsley's views upon several matters. When did you say the village meeting was, Mr. Walmsley?"
"Thursday night," I replied.