“Let me leave it with you. Well worth reading. But I’d like to have it back.”
“No, take it with you, gel.” The words were sharp. “Haven’t much time for reading anything these days. Happen I’ll lose it or something.” It was lame and obvious, but Josiah had been taken too much by surprise to do anything better. Gerty was annoyed with Ethel. She had no right to be so tactless. None knew so well as Ethel the state of the case in regard to Sally. At the same time Gerty’s respect for Josiah which amounted to genuine regard was a little wounded. He ought to have been big enough to have read the letter.
Ethel had contrived to banish the ease and the sunshine from the proceedings. The light of genial humor in the eyes of her father yielded to the truculence of that earlier epoch so familiar to Amelia. It was a great pity that it should be so; and after a tense moment the gallant Gerty did her best to pour oil on the vexed waters. “The other day in the Tribune they were praising you finely, Josiah.”
“Was they?” The King’s English was not his strong point in moments of tension. But in any moment, as Gerty knew, he had his share of the legitimate vanity of the rising publicist. “What did they say?”
“The Tribune said you deserved well, not only of your fellow townsmen, but of the country at large for the excellent work you had done in the last nine months for the national cause. They said your work on the Recruiting and Munitions Committees had been most valuable.”
Josiah was visibly mollified by this piping. “Very decent of the Tribune.”
“You’ll make an excellent mayor, Josiah. Your turn next year, isn’t it?”
Josiah nodded. The light came again into his eyes. “There’s no saying what sort of a mayor I’ll make. It’s a stiff job when you come to tackle it. Big responsibility in times like these.”
“You are not the man to shirk responsibility.”
Josiah allowed that he was not, but the office of mayor in a place like Blackhampton in times like these was no sinecure for a man with a sense of civic duty. Once more he clouded. From what he heard things were looking pretty bad. If England was going to win the war she should have to find a better set of brains.