, with its open
windows and empty rooms, had the look of a hive from which the bees have
swarmed. According to the butler, only Lady Niton was at home, and the
household was eagerly awaiting news of the declaration of the poll at
Dunscombe Town Hall. Lady Niton, indeed, was knitting in the
drawing-room.

"Capital!--to find you alone," said Bobbie, taking a seat beside her.
"All the others at Dunscombe, I hear. And no news yet?"

Lady Niton, who had given him one inky finger--(a pile of letters just
completed lay beside her)--shook her head, looking him critically up and
down the while.

The critical eye, however, was more required in her own case. She was
untidily dressed, as usual, in a shabby black gown; her brown "front"
was a little displaced, and her cap awry; and her fingers had apparently
been badly worsted in a struggle with her pen. Yet her diminutive figure
in the drawing-room--such is the power of personality--made a social
place of it at once.

"I obeyed your summons," Bobbie continued, "though I'm sure Lady Lucy
didn't want to invite me with all this hubbub going on. Well, what do
you prophesy? They told me at the station that the result would be out
by two o'clock. I very nearly went to the Town Hall, but the fact is
everybody's so nervous I funked it. If Oliver's kicked out, the fewer
tears over spilled milk the better."

"He won't be kicked out."

"Don't make too sure! I have been hearing the most dismal reports. The
Ferrierites hate him much worse than if he'd gone against them openly.
And the fellows he really agrees with don't love him much better."

"All the same he will get in; and if he don't get office now he will in
a few years."

"Oliver must be flattered that you believe in him so."

"I don't believe in him at all," said Lady Niton, sharply. "Every
country has the politicians it deserves."

Bobbie grinned.

"I don't find you a democrat yet."

"I'm just as much of one as anybody in this house, for all their fine
talk. Only they pretend to like being governed by their plumbers and
gas-fitters, and I don't."

"I hear that Oliver's speeches have been extremely good."

"H'm--all about the poor," said Lady Niton, releasing her hand from the
knitting-needles, and waving it scornfully at the room in which they
sat. "Well, if Oliver were to tell me from now till doomsday that his
heart bled for the poor, I shouldn't believe him. It doesn't bleed. He
is as comfortable in his middle reg