"It looks," said Octavius one evening in early February, "as if the
Grits were getting a little anxious about South Fox--high time, too.
I see Cruickshank is down to speak at Clayfield on the seventh, and
Tellier is to be here for the big meeting at the opera house on the
eleventh."

"Tellier is Minister of Public Works, isn't he?" asked Hesketh.

"Yes--and Cruickshank is an ex-Minister," replied Mr Milburn. "Looks
pretty shaky when they've got to take men like that away from their work
in the middle of the session."

"I shall be glad," remarked his daughter Dora, "when this horrid
election is over. It spoils everything."

She spoke a little fretfully. The election and the matters it involved
did interfere a good deal with her interest in life. As an occupation
it absorbed Lorne Murchison even more completely than she occasionally
desired; and as a topic it took up a larger share of the attention of Mr
Alfred Hesketh than she thought either reasonable or pleasing. Between
politics and boilers Miss Milburn almost felt at times that the world
held a second place for her.

CHAPTER XXVIII

The progress of Mrs Kilbannon and Miss Christie Cameron up the river
to Montreal, and so west to Elgin, was one series of surprises, most of
them pleasant and instructive to such a pair of intelligent Scotchwomen,
if we leave out the number of Roman Catholic churches that lift their
special symbol along the banks of the St Lawrence and the fact that Hugh
Finlay was not in Elgin to meet them upon their arrival. Dr Drummond, of
course, was there at the station to explain. Finlay had been obliged to
leave for Winnipeg only the day before, to attend a mission conference
in place of a delegate who had been suddenly laid aside by serious
illness. Finlay, he said, had been very loath to go, but there were many
reasons why it was imperative that he should; Dr Drummond explained them
all. "I insisted on it," he assured them, frankly. "I told him I would
take the responsibility."

He seemed very capable of taking it, both the ladies must have thought,
with his quick orders about the luggage and his waiting cab. Mrs
Kilbannon said so. "I'm sure," she told him, "we are better off with you
than with Hugh. He was always a daft dependence at a railway station."

They both--Mrs Kilbannon and Dr Drummond--looked out of the corners of
their eyes, so to speak, at Christie, the only one who might be expected
to show any sensitiveness; but Mis