“Carry it? Of course we’ll carry it!” the Squire replied wrathfully. “I suppose two and two still make four!”
Isaac White, who was whispering with a man in a corner of the room, wished that he was sure of that; or, rather, that three and two made six. But the Squire was continuing. “Bah!” he cried in disgust. “Give these people votes? Look at ’em! Look at ’em, sir! Votes indeed! Votes indeed! Give ’em oakum, I say!”
He forgot that nine-tenths of those below were as good as the voters at his elbow, who were presently to return two members for Chippinge. Or rather, it did not occur to him, good old Tory as he was, and convinced,
’Twas the Jacobins brought every mischief about,
that Dewell’s vote was Dewell’s, or Annibal’s Annibal’s.
Meanwhile, “I wish we were safe at the hustings!” young Mowatt shouted in the ear of the man who stood in front of him.
The man chanced to be Cooke, the other candidate. He turned. “At the hustings?” he said irascibly. “Do you mean, sir, that we are expected to fight our way through that rabble?”
“I am afraid we must,” Mowatt answered.
“Then it—has been d——d badly arranged!” retorted the outraged Cooke, who never forgot that as he paid well for his seat it ought to be a soft one. “Go through this mob, and have our heads broken?”
The faces of those who could hear him grew longer. “And it wants only five minutes of ten,” complained a third. “We ought to be going now.”