“That’ll do for a start,” Mr. Goard replied, and Miriam went to transcribe her notes at the typewriter.
“Our best to the missus,” said the manager half an hour later as he got into the car that had brought him to Hillside. “You couldn’t have a better platform than her.” Mr. Goard went on to express the opinion that it would be the “best fight ever put up”, but added that “those birds took a lot of beating”.
Keble promised to fight his hardest, and had a final word for the newspaper man. “Be sure to emphasize that it’s a straight program of common sense,—without flummery or mud-slinging or rosy promises that can’t be fulfilled.”
The editor acquiesced, but privately reserved the prerogative of serving up Keble’s phrases at a temperature and with garnishings adapted to the Witney palate. He had seen elections won by lungs and knuckles.
“Well,” Keble laughed on returning to Miriam’s side. “That’s done it! Do you remember the play, ‘What Every Woman Knows’? You’ll have to be Maggie Wylie and edit my speeches.”
Miriam’s tyrant exulted, but her honesty compelled her to say, “I doubt whether your supporters will appreciate my genius; it runs to neatness of copy and pluperfective subjunctives. Maggie Wylie put damns into her husband’s speeches, and Louise is the only person who can find the Witney and Valley equivalents. Is there any occasion she can’t rise to, for that matter?” This last remark was a trifle bitter.
In Keble’s mind was an image of Louise sitting beside her patient, quoting Swinburne. “We’ll submit our efforts to her,” he agreed. “We’ll pack Louise into an imaginary hall on the boat-slip, and I’ll stand up on an imaginary platform and rant. Louise will be the proletariat and boo, clap, or heckle. Then we shall know where we stand.”
“We are babes in the wood, you and I,” Miriam observed, with a familiar sense of incompetence.
For days they collected statistics, held consultations with visiting politicians and office-seekers, wrote and answered letters, made rough drafts of speeches which were in turn delivered before the “vast audience of one” on the boat-slip. More than once Keble and Miriam, seated in the launch, glanced at each other in dismay as Louise tore their sentences limb from limb.
“It’s beautiful comme argument,” she once commented, “only it lacks drama. Remember, darling, you have to sway them, not convince them. Once you get inside the Assembly you may be as cool as a cucumber and as logical as Euclid, but if you wish the natives to get you there, you have to tickle and sting them! That argument about neglected roads needs to be played up stronger. Picture the perils of taking your best girl for a Sunday drive from Witney to the Valley, with the horse getting mired and the off wheel starting an avalanche down the side of the Witney canyon and your best girl rolling down the hill to kingdom come; then suddenly turn serious and describe what decent roads would do for everybody, including yourself. Don’t be afraid to make the farmers see that you yourself have something to gain. Show them how the reforms you advocate would stimulate your trade as well as theirs and increase the value of your property.”