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heard him say. By a few small side-steps she soon edged her way from Sara’s side to the other group, watching with interest as Mr. Hudson reached out his hand and gave Mr. Reising’s a firm shake, then proceeded to make him known to the ladies as “a friend.”She had thought they must be mortal enemies.
    “I’ll take you this time, Mr. Hudson,”Reising said. “But it’s no fairfight. I have all the advantages in this riding.”
    “In the riding, yes, but not in the candidate,”Hudson objected. “I have not had the pleasure of your candidate’s acquaintance, but I have an excellent man.”
    “I haven’t met yours, either. Time we did so, don’t you think?”
    The omission was taken care of, and within a few minutes Hudson had learned more of interest from his two competitors than he had from any of his cohorts in two days.
    “You fight a losing battle,”Mr. Alistair told him. “With a promise from my party to build the bridge within eighteen months, I really don’t think you stand a chance.”
    Mr. Hudson heard this awful news without a blink. “They’ve been promising it for a long time, I understand. Every election the promise is renewed, but never kept.”
    “It’ll be kept this time,”Mr. Alistair said very firmly. “When I am elected, I will make it my chief interest to see that Crockett gets its bridge.”
    “ If you’re elected,”Hudson corrected.
    “Jolly glad to hear you mean to get that bridge for us,” Fellows congratulated his opponent. “Lord Allingham mentioned we might get it, now that an election is upon us.”
    Mr. Hudson was in despair to see his candidate make such a fool of himself. “Well, we’ll believe it when we see it, eh, Tony?”
    “If Alistair says he’ll get it, we’ll get it,”Tony confirmed. “But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, ha ha,”As well as his twelve Latin quotations, Fellows had a whole string of clichés at his fingertips. A word triggered a clichévery often, Hudson had observed, and was relieved that this one was not as irrelevant as many others.
    “That, of course, must depend on Mr. Alistair’s getting elected. Remember you are running against him, Tony,”Hudson said.
    “That’s right. And if I get in we won’t see hide nor hair of the bridge, for the repressive Tories run the whole show, you know, and only give the goods to their own ridings.”
    “I don’t think we need worry about your getting in, Mr. Fellows,”Reising said, with a glance almost of sympathy at his sworn rival, Hudson. He was a little sorry it was to be such an uneven match; he would have enjoyed a good tight race with Hudson.
    Hudson gazed in disbelief at Mr. Fellows. He had never thought he was a clever man, but this was the first evidence he had that he was a complete and utter fool.
    “We’ll be running along,”Reising said. “I see you are going to have your hands full, Mr. Hudson.”His eyes flickered in Fellows’s direction, and his lips were slightly unsteady.
    Then, with bows and farewells, the Tories left.
    “My, I wish I could vote,”Sara said, looking after the wide shoulders of Alistair as he departed.
    “Thank you, Miss Monteith,”Fellows said. “I appreciate the thought. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride, eh?”
    It was not only Sara who was at a loss as to his meaning, if he had any. Mr. Hudson was fagged after the better part of a day with Tony, and thought the undemanding company of the four supporters—and outside of Allingham and Basingstoke they seemed to be the only sure Whigs in the riding—might allow him to lower his vigilance till he had caught his breath.
    “We all pitched in and addressed those envelopes this morning,”Lillian said to him. “What shall we do with them?”
    “What fast workers you are! Thank you very much, I’ll pick them up. I begin to think letters might be very useful in this campaign.”
    Lillian bit her lip to suppress a smile, and as the candidate was telling the other ladies