"Is Miss Ffolliot at home?" Eloquent asked boldly.
"Miss Ffolliot is out huntin' with the young gentlemen," Fusby remarked stiffly.
So Eloquent was fain to get into his motor again, and quite forgot to look in on his aunt on the way back.
The night before the election there was a Liberal meeting in the Town Hall, and a certain section of the Tory party, a youthful and irresponsible section it must be confessed, had arranged to attend the meeting, and if possible bring it to nought. The ringleader in this scheme was a young man named Rabbich, whose people some years before had bought a large property in a village about four miles from Redmarley.
Mr Rabbich, senr., was an extremely wealthy man with many irons in the fire, a man so busy that he found little time to look after either his property or his family, and though he, himself, was generally declared to be a "very decent sort" with no nonsense or "side" about him, and of a praiseworthy liberality in the matter of subscriptions, his wife and children did not find equal favour either in the eyes of the villagers or those of his neighbours.
Mrs Rabbich was a foolish woman whose fetich was society with a big "S," and she idolised her only son, a rather vacuous youth who had just managed to scrape into Sandhurst.
On the night before the election then, young Rabbich gave a dinner at the Moonstone to some twenty youths of his own age, and Grantly Ffolliot was of the party. Grantly did not like young Rabbich, and as a rule steered clear of him in the hunting-field and elsewhere, though civil enough if actually brought into contact with him. But though Grantly did not like young Rabbich, he dearly loved any form of "rag," and as party feeling ran very high just then, the chance of disturbing the last Liberal meeting before the election was far too entrancing to be missed. He obtained his father's permission to go to the dinner (Mr Ffolliot was never difficult when his sons asked for permission to go from home), told his mother he would be late, obtained the key of the side door from Fusby, and quite unintentionally left his family under the impression that he was dining at the Rabbich's.
Mine host of the Moonstone provided an excellent dinner, and young Rabbich kept calling for more champagne, so that it was a very hilarious and somewhat unsteady party that presently, in a solid phalanx, got wedged in at the very back of the Town Hall, which was filled to overflowing. Twenty noisy young men in evening clothes, and all together, made a fairly conspicuous feature in the meeting, and the crowd, which was almost wholly Liberal in its sympathies, guessed they were out for trouble.
During the first couple of speeches, which were short and introductory, they were fairly quiet, only indulging in occasional derisive comments. When Eloquent arose to address the meeting he was greeted by such a storm of cheering from his supporters, as quite drowned the hisses and cat-calls of the "knuts" at the back of the hall.
But when he started to speak, their interruptions were incessant, irrelevant, and in the case of young Rabbich, offensive.