“If you ain’t off—my word!”
Headlong flight of the urchin. Joe closed the door with violence and sat down again. But the incident had unsettled him. He seemed unable to fix his mind on the newspaper. And the noises in the street waxed ever louder. Now they took the form of cheers and counter cheers, now of hoots, cat-calls and shouts of derision. At last the tumult rose to such a pitch that it drew Eliza from an inner room.
The years had changed her rather more than her husband. But she was still the active, capable, bustling housewife, with a keen eye for the world and all that was passing in it.
“They are making noise enough to wake the dead.” Eliza looked eagerly through the window.
“I wish that durned Scotchman hadn’t set his committee-room plumb oppersite Number Five, Beaconsfield Villas,” was Joe’s sour comment.
At that moment the all-embracing eye of a relentless housewife swooped down upon a card lying innocently on the linoleum. It had been flung there by the recent visitor. Eliza picked it up and read:
Vote for Maclean, thus:
Maclean X
Whitley.
On the back of the card was a portrait of Sir Dugald Maclean, M.P.
Eliza gazed at it in astonishment mingled with awe.
“I am bound to say he is a better-favored jockey than when he came a-courting our Harriet. Look, Joe!”