“There is only one way to mark John Hughes,” I said to myself, as I retraced my steps, “and that is ‘WON’T SAY!’” I wrote it very distinctly and felt that I had done my duty.
I looked at my card and found a dozen names in Confucius Street, of which the only one unticked was that of Robert Taylor. But on Mr. Taylor’s door-step another of our canvassers was already waiting for admittance. I thought, at first, that she belonged to the opposite camp, but a second glance at her face and figure reassured me. “Church school teacher,” I said to myself, and waited patiently to go to her assistance if Mr. Taylor became restive, and, in any case, to enter the result of the interview on my card. Mr. Taylor was not at home, and my brave young lady did her best to gain the sympathy of his wife, who was a little chilly and preoccupied, I thought. The conversation, though delightfully friendly, was almost one-sided.
“You know Canon Black, don’t you? (“Ah,” I thought, “she has got our trump card too, has she?”) Mr. Ashfield knows him very well. He thinks so much of him.... Yes, I quite agree with you, there’s a great deal too much of it, and Mr. Ashfield is just the sort of man you want to put it down. He gives so much time to the work, too. (“I must remember always to put that in,” I said to myself.) You have no idea the trouble he takes with it.... No, I don’t think the other gentleman does; you see, he has hardly the time for it. That is why we are trying to get Mr. Ashfield in; just because of that. He is such a sound man and can give the time to it. Thank you very much.... Oh, we shall certainly get him in if they all help us as much as you!”
“What do you think?” I said to her, card in hand, “doubtful?”
“No,” she replied brightly, her inextinguishable optimism shining through her glasses. “I think it will be better to say, ‘Not at home, but probably Conservative.’”
One of the greatest blows to my pride was Clarissa Scholefield. I wound up with her before lunch, and it had to be a good lunch! No amount of buns could have repaired my body after the humiliating loss of stamina—what I call “sawdust”—caused by that astonishingly powerful Clarissa with the butterfly in her cap. It had come on to rain, too, and, altogether, I cut a sorry figure in her well-ordered apartment with the mats and the shells.
“No, I don’t hold with the votin’,” she pronounced, grasping my offering of a shiny card, decorated with Reginald’s portrait, the names of his supporters, and seven reasons for preferring him before all other candidates. “No, I don’t hold with the votin’, and, what’s more, if I did vote I must see first what he’s goin’ to do when he is in. I always was and have been Conservative, but I haven’t voted for forty years and I don’t care to undertake it. Besides, I’m not at all sure he’s the right man. There’s a great deal of mischief goes on in public-houses, and the question is ‘who’s goin’ to stop it?’ I was sayin’ to a gentleman as was in here the other day that I hoped they was going to send men on to the Council as would put a stop to it.... Yes, it’s very wet: I dare say you find it tirin’.”
I wrote, “Mr. Ashfield call,” with a very sharp pencil, against Clarissa’s name, and thought with pleasure, as I ordered a fried sole and chop to follow, of Reginald pommelling her silly old head with masterly repartee. After lunch I thought, with a more refined and indulgent glee, of dear Reginald’s silken head writhing under the podgy grasp of Clarissa’s hand—metaphorically, of course.