"I've come to say to you that this won't do at all. He is pledged to go to the poll, and he must go, cheerily and pleasantly, though there is no doubt about it that we shall get an awful thrashing."
"You think so?"
"I'm sure so. We were doing very well at first, and Mr. Creswell is very much respected and all that, and he would have beat that young What's-his-name--Bokenham--without very much trouble. But this Joyce is a horse of a different colour. Directly he started the current seemed to turn. He's a good-looking fellow, and they like that; and a self-made man, and they like that; and he speaks capitally, tells 'em facts which they can understand, and they like that. He has done capitally from the first; and now they've got up some story--Harrington did that, I fancy, young Harrington acting for Potter and Fyfe, very clever fellow--they've got up some story that Joyce was jilted some time ago by the girl he was engaged to, who threw him over because he was poor, or something of that sort, I can't recollect the details--and that has been a splendid card with the women; they are insisting on their husbands' voting for him; so that altogether we're in a bad way."
"Do you think Mr. Creswell will be defeated, Mr. Gould? You'll tell me honestly, of course."
"It's impossible to say until the day, quite impossible, my dear Mrs. Creswell; but I'm bound to confess it looks horribly like it. By what I understand from Mr. Croke, who wrote to me the other day, Mr. Creswell has given up attending public meetings, and that kind of thing, and that's foolish, very foolish."
"His health has been anything but good lately, and----"
"I know; and of course his spirits have been down also. But he must keep them up, and he must go to the poll, even if he's beaten."
"And the chances of that are, you think, strong?"
"Are, I fear, very strong! However, something might yet be done if he were to do a little house-to-house canvassing in his old bright spirits. But in any case, Mrs. Creswell, he must stick to his guns, and we look to you to keep him there!"
"I will do my best," said Marian, and the interview was at an end.