d over, instead
of the tabulated figures that were his business: he had to show himself
his way to the conclusion that such a thing could not matter seriously
in the end, since Milburn hadn't a dollar involved--it would be
different if he were a shareholder in the Maple Line. He wished
heartily, nevertheless, that he could demonstrate a special advantage
to boiler-makers in competitive freights with New York. What did they
import, confound them! Pig-iron? Plates and rivets? Fortunately he was
in a position to get at the facts, and he got at them with an interest
of even greater intensity than he had shown to the whole question since
ten that morning. Even now, the unprejudiced observer, turning up the
literature connected with the Cruickshank deputation, may notice a
stress laid upon the advantages to Canadian importers of ore in certain
stages of manufacture which may strike him as slightly, very slightly,
special. Of course there are a good many of them in the country. So
that Mr Horace Williams was justified to some extent in his kindly
observation upon the excusable egotism of youth. Two or three letters,
however, came in while Lorne was considering the relation of plates and
rivets to the objects of his deputation. They were all congratulatory;
one was from the chairman of the Liberal Association at its headquarters
in Toronto. Lorne glanced at them and stowed them away in his pocket.
He would read them when he got home, when it would be a pleasure to hand
them over to his mother. She was making a collection of them.

He had a happy perception that same evening that Mr Milburn's position
was not, after all, finally and invincibly taken against the deputation
and everything--everybody--concerned with it. He met that gentleman at
his own garden gate. Octavius paused in his exit, to hold it open for
young Murchison, thus even assisting the act of entry, a thing which
thrilled Lorne sweetly enough when he had time to ponder its possible
significance. Alas! the significance that lovers find! Lorne read a
world in the behaviour of Dora's father in holding the gate open. He
saw political principle put aside in his favour, and social position
forgotten in kindness to him. He saw the gravest, sincerest appreciation
of his recent success, which he took as humbly as a dog will take a
bone; he read a fatherly thought at which his pulses bounded in an
arrogance of triumph, and his heart rose to ask its trust. And Octavius
Milbu