d severely, eyeing
Lorne's empty place.

The talk about the lamplit table was, nevertheless, all of the election,
blessed or unblessed. It was not in human nature that it shouldn't be,
as Mrs Murchison would have very quickly told you if you had found her
inconsistent. There was reason in all things, as she frequently said.

"I hear," Alec had told them, "that Octavius Milburn is going around
bragging he's got the Elgin Chamber of Commerce consolidated this time."

"Against us?" exclaimed Stella; and her brother said, "Of course!"

"Those Milburns," remarked Mrs Murchison, "are enough to make one's
blood boil. I met Mrs Milburn in the market yesterday; she'd been
pricing Mrs Crow's ducks, and they were just five cents too dear for
her, and she stopped--wonderful thing for her--and had SUCH an amount
to say about Lorne, and the honour it was, and the dear only knows what!
Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth--and Octavius Milburn doing all
he knew against him the whole time! That's the Milburns! I cut her
remarkably short," Mrs Murchison added, with satisfaction, "and when
she'd made up her mind she'd have to give that extra five cents for
the ducks because there weren't any others to be had, she went back and
found I'd bought them."

"Well done, Mother!" said Alec, and Oliver remarked that if those were
today's ducks they were too good for the Milburn crowd, a lot.

"I expect she wanted them, too," remarked Stella. "They've got the only
Mr Hesketh staying with them now. Miss Filkin's in a great state of
excitement."

"I guess we can spare them Hesketh," said John Murchison.

"He's a lobster," said Stella with fervour.

"He seems to bring a frost where he goes," continued Abby's husband,
"in politics, anyhow. I hear Lorne wants to make a present of him to the
other side, for use wherever they'll let him speak longest. Is it true
he began his speech out at Jordanville--'Gentlemen--and those of you who
are not gentlemen'?"

"Could he have meant Mrs Farquharson and Miss Milburn?" asked Mr
Murchison quietly, when the derision subsided; and they laughed again.

"He told me," said Advena, "that he proposed to convert Mr Milburn to
the imperial policy."

"He'll have his job cut out for him," said her father.

"For my part," Abby told them, "I think the Milburns are beneath
contempt. You don't know exactly what it is, but there's something ABOUT
them--not that we ever come in contact with them," she continued with
d