n there's snow
on the ground, a great sight, especially if there's drifts."

And for an instant, with his knotted hands hanging between his knees
he pondered this unvarying aspect of his yearly experience. They all
pondered it, sympathetic.

"Well, now, Mr Farquharson," Mrs Crow turned to him. "An' how reely
BE ye? We've heard better, an' worse, an' middlin'--there's ben such
contradictory reports."

"Oh, very well, Mrs Crow. Never better. I'm going to give a lot more
trouble yet. I can't do it in politics, that's the worst of it. But
here's the man that's going to do it for me. Here's the man!"

The Crows looked at the pretendant, as in duty bound, but not any longer
than they could help.

"Why, I guess you were at school with Elmore?" said Crow, as if the idea
had just struck him.

"He may be right peart, for all that," said Elmore's mother, and Elmore,
himself, entering with two leading Liberals of Jordanville, effected a
diversion, under cover of which Mrs Crow escaped, to superintend, with
Bella, the last touches to the supper in the kitchen.

Politics in and about Jordanville were accepted as a purely masculine
interest. If you had asked Mrs Crow to take a hand in them she would
have thanked you with sarcasm, and said she thought she had about enough
to do as it was. The school-house, on the night of such a meeting as
this, was recognized to be no place for ladies. It was a man's affair,
left to the men, and the appearance there of the other sex would
have been greeted with remark and levity. Elgin, as we know, was more
sophisticated in every way, plenty of ladies attended political meetings
in the Drill Shed, where seats as likely as not would be reserved for
them; plenty of handkerchiefs waved there for the encouragement of the
hero of the evening. They did not kiss him; British phlegm, so far, had
stayed that demonstration at the southern border.

The ladies of Elgin, however, drew the line somewhere, drew it at
country meetings. Mrs Farquharson went with her husband because, since
his state of health had handed him over to her more than ever, she saw
it a part of her wifely duty. His retirement had been decided upon for
the spring, but she would be on hand to retire him at any earlier moment
should the necessity arise. "We'll be the only female creatures there,
my dear," she had said to Dora on the way out, and Hesketh had praised
them both for public spirit. He didn't know, he said, how anybody would