rdinary Liberal,
because they had the decency to drop down dead when they'd finished,
whereas Vittie's friends simply went on and told more. By that time
there wasn't one in the hall could do more than croak, they'd got so
hoarse with all the cheering. I might have been in a bath myself with
the way the sweat was running off me, hot sweat."

Titherington paused, for the nurse knocked at the door again. This time
he got up and let her in. Then he went on with his story.

"The next minute," he said, "it was frozen on me."

"The sweat?"

Titherington nodded.

"Go on," I said.

"She went on all right. You'll hardly believe it, but when she'd
finished with O'Donoghue and Vittie she went on to----"

"Me, I suppose."

"No. Me," said Titherington. "She said she didn't blame you in the
least because she didn't think you had sense enough to lie like a
real politician, and that those two letters about the Temperance
Question----"

"She'd got ahold of those?"

"They were in the papers, of course, and she said I'd written them.
Well, for just half a minute I wasn't quite sure whether the boys were
going to rush the platform or not. There wouldn't have been much left of
Miss Beresford if they had. But she's a damned good-looking girl. That
saved her. Instead of mobbing her every man in the place started to
laugh. I tell you there were fellows there with stitches in their sides
from laughing so that they'd have given a five-pound note to be able to
stop. But they couldn't. Every time they looked at me and saw me sitting
there with a kind of a cast-iron grin on my face--and every time they
looked at the two temperance secretaries who were gaping like stuck
pigs, they started off laughing again. Charlie Sanderson, the butcher,
who's a stoutish kind of man, tumbled off his chair and might have
broken his neck. I never saw such a scene in my life."

I saw the nurse poking about to find her thermometer. Titherington saw
her too and knew what was coming.

"It was all well enough for once," he said, "but we can't have it
again."

"How do you propose to stop it?" I asked.

"My idea," said Titherington, "is that you should see her and explain to
her that we've had enough of that sort of thing and that for the future
she'd better stick entirely to Vittie."

I am always glad to see Lalage. Nothing, even in my miserable condition,
would have pleased me better than a visit from her, But I am not
prepared at any time to explain