“Runnin’ the country ain’t the same as runnin’ a Sunday School,” he added, in justification.
“The governing principles should be the same,” answered Dilling. “No, Sam, I can’t do it. Argument is useless. When you and the boys think it over, you will agree that the man who would have carried out your proposition is not the type that you would have to mould the policy of the Nation. I hope that Pinto Plains will never send a chap like that to Parliament! You’ll come down to the house, of course, won’t you?”
But Mr. Dunlop did not hear the invitation. He was so absorbed in expressing his opinion of the man he had sent to Parliament, that he failed to recognise Sir Robert Borden whom he passed in the corridor, and ran violently into Sir Eric and Lady Denby without uttering a word of apology.
“We’ll fix him,” he muttered under his breath. “We’ll fix him!”
In the office there was silence save for the sibilent fluttering of papers on Azalea’s desk. Presently, Dilling spoke.
“I’m too indignant at the moment to be sorry for them!” he said. “And it’s something of a shock to find that they held me in no higher esteem than to think I would be a party to such jobbery.”
“I doubt that they looked at the matter in just that way. Isn’t it merely another example of the common practice of bringing your white elephant to feed at the Dominion crib?”
“It’s another example of perverted ethics,” growled Dilling, and he went angrily off to lunch.
Azalea sat on, thinking. What, she asked herself, would be the outcome of Raymond Dilling’s uncompromising attitude with men of Dunlop’s calibre? Would he, like Marjorie, persistently close his eyes to the advantage of temporising in matters that affected his political career? Would he never learn that a gentle lie turneth away enquiry and that as Dunlop had so truly said, the country was not run like a Sunday School? She had heard him reject more than one proposition made by men of his own Party who never could be brought to see the criminous side of misappropriation of public funds. She had known him to ignore the Patronage system by refusing positions to incompetents, as bluntly as he had discarded Dunlop’s scheme. And a little compromising, or even temporising, would have accomplished his object without loss of good will.
“Custom,” he once said in answer to her remonstrance, “can never in my opinion sanctify piracy or brigandage. I don’t believe in Patronage and never shall. Incompetency should be treated and overcome if possible, but not rewarded.”