"Had ye no
friends among the commoners?" suddenly spoke up a dry
old fellow, stroking a long white beard; and the roar
that greeted this showed the sense of the meeting. Hesketh
closed with assurances of the admiration and confidence
he felt toward the candidate proposed to their suffrages
by the Liberal party that were quite inaudible, and sought
his yellow pinewood schoolroom chair with rather a forced
smile. It had been used once before that day to isolate
conspicuous stupidity.
They were at bottom a good-natured and a loyal crowd,
and they had not, after all, come there to make trouble,
or Mr Alfred Hesketh might have carried away a worse
opinion of them. As it was, young Murchison, whose address
occupied the rest of the evening, succeeded in making an
impression upon them distinct enough, happily for his
personal influence, to efface that of his friend. He did
it by the simple expedient of talking business, and as
high prices for produce and low ones for agricultural
implements would be more interesting there than here, I
will not report him. He and Mr Farquharson waited, after
the meeting, for a personal word with a good many of
those present, but it was suggested to Hesketh that the
ladies might be tired, and that he had better get them
home without unnecessary delay.
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