“No. Me,” said Titherington. “She said she didn’t blame you in the least because she didn’t think you had sense enough to lie like a real politician, and that those two letters about the Temperance Question——”
“She’d got ahold of those?”
“They were in the papers, of course, and she said I’d written them. Well, for just half a minute I wasn’t quite sure whether the boys were going to rush the platform or not. There wouldn’t have been much left of Miss Beresford if they had. But she’s a damned good-looking girl. That saved her. Instead of mobbing her every man in the place started to laugh. I tell you there were fellows there with stitches in their sides from laughing so that they’d have given a five-pound note to be able to stop. But they couldn’t. Every time they looked at me and saw me sitting there with a kind of a cast-iron grin on my face—and every time they looked at the two temperance secretaries who were gaping like stuck pigs, they started off laughing again. Charlie Sanderson, the butcher, who’s a stoutish kind of man, tumbled off his chair and might have broken his neck. I never saw such a scene in my life.”
I saw the nurse poking about to find her thermometer. Titherington saw her too and knew what was coming.
“It was all well enough for once,” he said, “but we can’t have it again.”
“How do you propose to stop it?” I asked.
“My idea,” said Titherington, “is that you should see her and explain to her that we’ve had enough of that sort of thing and that for the future she’d better stick entirely to Vittie.”
I am always glad to see Lalage. Nothing, even in my miserable condition, would have pleased me better than a visit from her. But I am not prepared at any time to explain things to her, especially when the explanation is meant to influence her action. I am particularly unfitted for the task when I am in a state of convalescence. I interrupted Titherington.
“Nurse,” I said, “have you got that thermometer? I’m nearly sure my temperature is up again.”
Titherington scowled, but he knew he was helpless. As he left the room he stopped for a moment and turned to me. “What beats me about the whole performance,” he said, “is that she never said a single word about woman’s suffrage from start to finish. I never met one of that lot before who could keep off the subject for as much as ten minutes at a time even in private conversation.”