“He’s crusty, too!” cried the wit.
But this was too much for the chairman. “Silence! Silence!” he cried, and, as at a signal, there was a rush, the two interrupters were seized and, surrounded by a gang of hobbledehoys, were hustled down the road, fighting furiously and shouting, “Blues! Blues!”
The chairman made use of the lull to step to the edge of the cart and take off his hat. He looked about him, pompous and important.
“Gentlemen,” he began, “free and independent electors of our ancient borough! At a crisis such as this, a crisis the most momentous—the most momentous——” he paused and looked into his hat, “that history has known, when the very staff of life is, one may say, the apple of discord, it is an honor to me to take the chair!”
“The cart you mean!” cried a voice, “you’re in the cart!”
The speaker cast a withering glance in the direction whence the voice came, lost his place and, failing to find it, went on in a different strain. “I’m a business man,” he said, “you all know that! I’m a business man, and I’m not ashamed of it. I stick to my business and my business to-day——”
“Better go on with it!”
But he was getting set, and he was not to be abashed. “My business to-day,” he repeated, “is to ask your attention for the distinguished candidate who seeks your suffrages, and for the—the distinguished gentleman on my left who will presently follow me.”
A hollow groan checked him at this point, but he recovered himself. “First, however,” he continued, “I propose, with your permission, to say a word on the—the great question of the day—if I may call it so. It is to the food of the people I refer!”
He paused for cheers, under cover of which Banfield murmured to his neighbor that Hatton was set now for half an hour. He had yet to learn that open-air meetings have their advantages.