At the street corner, with a persuasive finger in the buttonhole of an unconvinced Socialist (and a vigilant eye straining down the long and unlovely vista of Jackson's Row), Dolly usually encounters Robert Chalmers Fordyce.
[CHAPTER THIRTEEN.]
A HOSTAGE TO FORTUNE.
Nomination day came, and I was duly entered by my proprietors for the Election Stakes, though I was painfully aware that my selection as Candidate was not universally popular.
However, as Cash remarked, "It is canvassing from door to door that does the trick, and there you have the bulge on Stridge. He's not a bad old buffer himself, but they hate his wife like poison. She drives up to their doors in a silver-plated brougham with a double-breasted coachman, and tells 'em to vote for Stridge, not because he used to live in a one-roomed house himself—which he did, and her too—but because he's a local god-on-wheels. Of course they won't stick that."
I also continued to address meetings, receive deputations, and generally solicit patronage in a way that would have made a cab-tout blush for shame. As a recreation I kicked off at football matches and laid foundation-stones. The most important function in which I took part was the opening of the new wing of the Municipal Library. The ceremony, which was by way of being a non-party affair, took place on a blustering February afternoon. The élite of Stoneleigh were picturesquely grouped upon the steps of the main entrance of the Library, from the topmost of which the Mayor, the Dean, and the Candidates addressed a shivering and apathetic audience below.
Fortunately, the company were too exclusively occupied in holding on their hats and blowing their blue noses to pay much attention to the improving harangues of Mr Stridge and myself; which was perhaps just as well, for men who have three or four highly critical and possibly hostile meetings to address later in the day are not likely to waste good things upon an assembly who probably cannot hear them, and will only say "Hear, hear!" in sepulchral tones if they do.
The actual opening of the wing was accomplished quite informally (and I may say unexpectedly) by Kitty and Mrs Stridge—a fearsome matron, who looked like a sort of Nonconformist Boadicea—who were huddling together for warmth in the recess of the doorway. On a pedestal before them lay two small gold keys, with which they were presently to unlock the door itself, what time I, in trumpet tones, declared the Library open. Whether through natural modesty or a desire to escape the assaults of the wind, the two ladies shrank back so closely into the door that that accommodating portal, evidently deeming it ungallant to wait even for a golden key under such circumstances, incontinently flew open, and Mesdames Inglethwaite and Stridge subsided gracefully into the arms of a spectacled and embarrassed Librarian, who was formally waiting inside to receive the company at the proper moment.
After that, the proceedings, which so far had been almost as bleak as the weather, went with a roar to the finish.