“Taxation!” shouted the people.
A short-hand writer close to the platform repeated his last sentence, and Raeburn at once took the cue and finished his speech with perfect ease. Every one felt, however, that it was an uncomfortable incident, and, though to the audience Raeburn chose to make a joke of it, he knew well enough that it boded no good.
“You ought to take a rest,” said Donovan to him when the meeting was over.
“I own to needing it,” said Raeburn. “Pogson's last bit of malice will, I hope, be quashed in a few days and, after that, rest may be possible. He is of opinion that 'there are mony ways of killing a dog though ye dinna hang him,' and, upon my word, he's not far wrong.”
He was besieged here by two or three people who wanted to ask his advice, and Donovan turned to Erica.
“He has been feeling all this talk about Herr Haeberlein; people say the most atrocious things about him just because he gave him shelter at the last,” she said. “Really sometimes the accusations are so absurd that we ourselves can't help laughing at them. But though I don't believe in being 'done to death by slanderous tongues,' there is no doubt that the constant friction of these small annoyances does tell on my father very perceptibly. After all, you know the very worst form of torture is merely the perpetual falling of a drop of water on the victim's head.”
“I suppose since last summer this sort of thing has been on the increase?”
“Indeed it has,” she replied. “It is worse, I think, than you have any idea of. You read your daily paper and your weekly review, but every malicious, irritating word put forth by every local paper in England, Scotland, or Ireland comes to us, not to speak of all that we get from private sources.”
On their way home they did all in their power to persuade Raeburn to take an immediate holiday, but he only shook his head.
“'Dree out the inch when ye have thol'd the span,'” he said, leaning back wearily in the cab but taking care to give the conversation an abrupt turn before relapsing into silence.