When Edgar left him, Mr. Ford sat for a while buried in thought. "It is the way of the world," he said to himself; "one man is born to wealth and power and success, and he flings them all away; another man has everything against him, and he climbs to the top of the tree. The son of the rich man serves, while the son of the poor man sits down to meat; and one man labours, in order that another man's son may enter into his labours. Certainly Fate has a sense of humour."
Then he took up his pen and wrote to Paul Seaton.
CHAPTER XXIII.
The Election.
They fought all day with might and main;
And when the sun was set
The victors longed to fight again—
The vanquished, to forget.
Paul Seaton was one of the men who possess the useful knack of knowing when the tide of their affairs is at the flood; so when Mr. Ford asked him to come down and fight the Liberal battle at Chayford in Edgar's stead, Paul consented without an hour's delay.
At the beginning of the campaign Joanna came home, completely restored to health, bringing Isabel with her; and the inhabitants of the Cottage gave themselves up body and soul to the election, and talked and thought and dreamed of nothing else. Great was the excitement all over England, and Chayford was no exception to the rule. For three weeks Paul made several speeches per day, and was treated as if he were a combination of Juggernaut and a popular preacher, with a flavour of Royalty thrown in.
Everybody in the town, including even the babies and the cats, wore colours, if it were nothing better than a scrap of tea paper; and there was all that delicious love of fighting in the air which makes an election like a glorious war with no death or danger in it.
"Isn't it fun?" exclaimed Isabel one day. "I adore every minute of it. It makes you hate the other side with such an exquisite frenzy of hatred, which has neither malice nor uncharitableness in it and yet which is so charmingly violent while it lasts."
"I know," agreed Joanna, "it is that nice sort of hatred which would never let you really injure people, but which makes you want their chimneys to smoke and their hats to blow off."