On his
return he confided it to Horace Williams, who scoffed
and ran the national politics of the Express in the local
interests of Fox County as hard as ever; but it had fallen
in with Lorne's beautiful beliefs about England, and he
clung to it for years.
The Williamses had come over the second evening following
Lorne's arrival, after tea. Rawlins had gone to the
station, just to see that the Express would make no
mistake in announcing that Mr L. Murchison had "Returned
to the Paternal Roof," and the Express had announced it,
with due congratulation. Family feeling demanded that
for the first twenty-four hours he should be left to his
immediate circle, but people had been dropping in all
the next day at the office, and now came the Williamses
"trapesing," as Mrs Murchison said, across the grass,
though she was too content to make it more than a private
grievance, to where they all sat on the verandah.
"What I don't understand," Horace Williams said to Mr
Murchison, "was why you didn't give him a blow on the
whistle. You and Milburn and a few others might have got
up quite a toot. You don't get the secretary to a deputation
for tying up the Empire home every day."
"You did that for him in the Express," said John Murchison,
smiling as he pressed down, with an accustomed thumb,
the tobacco into his pipe.
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