Then espying them, he hurried over, and rubbing his hands with pleasure said warmly: "My dear Mahony, this is indeed kind! Jerry, my lad, how do, how do? Still growing, I see! We'll make a fine fellow of you yet.— Well, doctor! ... we've every reason, I think, to feel satisfied with the lie of the land."
But here he was snatched from them by an urgent request for a pronouncement—"A quite informal word, sir, if you'll be so good,"—on the vexed question of vote by ballot. And this being a pet theme of John's, and a principle he was ready to defend through thick and thin, he willingly complied.
Mahony had no further talk with him. The speech over—it was a concise and spirited utterance, and, if you were prepared to admit the efficacy of the ballot, convincing enough—Mahony quietly withdrew. He had to see a patient at eleven. Polly, too, would probably be lying awake for news of her brother.
As he threw back his braces and wound up his watch, he felt it incumbent on him to warn her not to pitch her hopes too high. "You mustn't expect, my dear, that your brother's arrival will mean much to us. He is now a public man, and will have little time for small people like ourselves. I'm bound to admit, Polly, I was very favourably impressed by the few words I heard him say," he added.
"Oh, Richard, I'm SO glad!" and Polly, who had been sitting on the edge of the bed, stood on tiptoe to give him a kiss.
As Mahony predicted, John's private feelings went down before the superior interests of his campaign. Three days passed before he found time to pay his sister a visit; and Polly, who had postponed a washing, baked her richest cakes and pastries, and clad Trotty in her Sunday best each day of the three: Polly was putting a good face on the matter, and consoling herself with Jerry's descriptions of John's triumphs. How she wished she could hear some of the speechifying! But Richard would never consent; and electioneering did certainly seem, from what Jerry said, a very rough-and-ready business—nothing for ladies. Hence her delight knew no bounds when John drove up unexpectedly late one afternoon, between a hard day's personal canvassing and another of the innumerable dinners he had to eat his way through. Tossing the reins to the gentleman who sat next him, he jumped out of the wagonette—it was hung with placards of "Vote for Turnham!"—and gave a loud rat-a-tat at the door.
Forgetting in her excitement that this was Ellen's job, Polly opened to him herself, and drew him in. "John! How pleased I am to see you!"
"My dear girl, how are you? God bless me, how you've altered! I should never have known you." He held her at arm's length, to consider her.
"But you haven't changed in the least, John. Except to grow younger.— Richard, here's John at last!—and Trotty, John ... here's Trotty!— Take your thumb out of your mouth, naughty girl!—She's been watching for you all day, John, with her nose to the window." And Polly pushed forward the scarlet, shrinking child.
John's heartiness suffered a distinct check as his eyes lit on Trotty, who stood stiff as a bit of Dresden china in her bunchy starched petticoats. "Come here, Emma, and let me look at you." Taking the fat little chin between thumb and first finger, he turned the child's face up and kept it so, till the red button of a mouth trembled, and the great blue eyes all but ran over. "H'm! Yes ... a notable resemblance to her mother. Ah, time passes, Polly my dear—time passes!" He sighed. —"I hope you mind your aunt, Emma, and are properly grateful to her?"