"So they were," said Cash.
"Of course, if they had known," said Champion, "they would have gone home like lambs."
"Somehow," said Robin, "I wish they could have been told, Adrian. I should have liked fine to explain to them that you didn't leave the meeting just because you couldn't answer that last question."
"By gum!" Cash had been striving to deliver himself for some time. "Mr Inglethwaite," he said excitedly, "they must be told at once! We can get more good out of your little girl's illness than fifty meetings would do us. You know what the British public are! I'll circulate the real reason of your departure from the meeting first thing to-morrow morning, and half the wobblers in the place will vote for you out of sheer kind-heartedness. I know 'em!"
The exemplary creature almost smacked his lips.
There was a tense silence all round the table. Then I said, with some heat—
"Mr Cash, I have delivered myself into your hands, body and soul, ever since Nomination Day, and I have obeyed you to the letter all through this campaign. But—I am not going to allow a sick child's sufferings to be employed as a political asset to-morrow."
There was a sympathetic growl from the other two.
"Oh, we shouldn't do it as publicly as all that," said the unabashed Cash. "Trust me! No ostentation; just an explanatory report circulated in a subdued sort of way—and perhaps a strip of tan-bark down on the road outside the hotel—eh? I know how to do it. It'll pay, I tell you. And there'll be no publicity——"
I laid my head upon the table and groaned. For three weeks I had had perhaps four hours' sleep a-night, and I had been worked down to my last reserve of energy, keeping in hand just enough to meet all the probable contingencies of to-morrow's election. Dialectics with Cash as to the market value of a little girl's illness had not been included in the estimate. I groaned.