“Yes,” said Lorne, “but he drives it tandem, and Johnny Francois is the second horse.”
“Maybe so,” returned Mr Williams, “but the organ’s singing pretty small, too. Look at this.” He picked up the Dominion from the office table and read aloud: “‘If Great Britain wishes to do a deal with the colonies she will find them willing to meet her in a spirit of fairness and enthusiasm. But it is for her to decide, and Canada would be the last to force her bread down the throat of the British labourer at a higher price than he can afford to pay for it.’ What’s that, my boy? Is it high-mindedness? No, sir, it’s lukewarmness.”
“The Dominion makes me sick,” said young Murchison. “It’s so scared of the Tory source of the scheme in England that it’s handing the whole boom of the biggest chance this country ever had over to the Tories here. If anything will help us to lose it that will. No Conservative Government in Canada can put through a cent of preference on English goods when it comes to the touch, and they know it. They’re full of loyalty just now—baying the moon—but if anybody opens a window they’ll turn tail fast enough.”
“I guess the Dominion knows it, too,” said Mr Williams. “When Great Britain is quite sure she’s ready to do business on preference lines it’s the Liberal party on this side she’ll have to talk to. No use showing ourselves too anxious, you know. Besides, it might do harm over there. We’re all right; we’re on record. Wallingham knows as well as we do the lines we’re open on—he’s heard them from Canadian Liberals more than once. When they get good and ready they can let us know.”
“Jolly them up with it at your meetings by all means,” advised Bingham, “but use it as a kind of superfluous taffy; don’t make it your main lay-out.”
The Reform Association of South Fox had no more energetic officer than Bingham, though as he sat on the edge of the editorial table chewing portions of the margin of that afternoon’s Express, and drawling out maxims to the Liberal candidate, you might not have thought so. He was explaining that he had been in this business for years, and had never had a job that gave him so much trouble.
“We’ll win out,” he said, “but the canvass isn’t any Christmas joy—not this time. There’s Jim Whelan,” he told them. “We all know what Jim is—a Tory from way back, where they make ‘em so they last, and a soaker from way back, too; one day on his job and two days sleepin’ off his whiskey. Now we don’t need Jim Whelan’s vote, never did need it, but the boys have generally been able to see that one of those two days was election day. There’s no necessity for Jim’s putting in his paper—a character like that—no necessity at all—he’d much better be comfortable in bed. This time, I’m darned if the old boozer hasn’t sworn off! Tells the boys he’s on to their game, and there’s no liquor in this town that’s good enough to get him to lose his vote—wouldn’t get drunk on champagne. He’s held out for ten days already, and it looks like Winter’d take his cross all right on Thursday.”
“I guess I’d let him have it, Bingham,” said Lorne Murchison with a kind of tolerant deprecation, void of offence, the only manner in which he knew how to convey disapproval to the older man. “The boys in your division are a pretty tough lot, anyhow. We don’t want the other side getting hold of any monkey tricks.”
“It’s necessary to win this election, young man,” said Bingham, “lawfully. You won’t have any trouble with my bunch.”
It was not, as will be imagined, the first discussion, so late in the day, of the value of the preference trade argument to the Liberal campaign. They had all realized, after the first few weeks, that their young candidate was a trifle overbitten with it, though remonstrance had been a good deal curbed by Murchison’s treatment of it. When he had brought it forward at the late fall fairs and in the lonely country schoolhouses, his talk had been so trenchant, so vivid and pictorial, that the gathered farmers listened with open mouths, like children, pathetically used with life, to a grown-up fairy tale. As Horace Williams said, if a dead horse could be made to go this one would have brought Murchison romping in. And Lorne had taken heed to the counsel of his party leaders. At joint meetings, which offered the enemy his best opportunity for travesty and derision, he had left it in the background of debate, devoting himself to arguments of more immediate utility. In the literature of the campaign it glowed with prospective benefit, but vaguely, like a halo of Liberal conception and possible achievement, waiting for the word from overseas. The Express still approved it, but not in headlines, and wished the fact to be widely understood that while the imperial idea was a very big idea, the Liberals of South Fox were going to win this election without any assistance from it.