"Old Hollis is head of the committee, an' he says the first thing for all the committee men to do was to see the women of the men goin' for Henderson was the same way," he replied.

"Oh, an' so you thought you could come the Czar on us, did you? an'

the Government, accordin' to Hollis's make out, is a fool to give women a vote; like in your case instead of giving me an' Carry a vote each, it ought to have give you three."

"Oh, Mr Sorrel!" said I, "what a joke! Was he really so ignorant as that; surely he was joking too?"

Uncle Jake had sufficient wit to take this opportunity of changing his tactics.

"No," he said, "some people is terrible narrer; for my part I always believe in wimmen holdin' their own opinion."

"So long as they didn't run contrary to yours," said grandma with a sniff. "There's heaps more like you. Women can always think as much as they like, an' they could get up on a platform an' talk till they bust, as long as they didn't want the world to be made no better, an'

they wouldn't be thought unwomanly. It's soon as a woman wants any practical good done that she is considered a unwomanly creature."

Uncle Jake was outdone and relapsed into silence.

"An' that's just what I would have expected of old Hollis," continued grandma, who seemed to have a knowledge of people's doings rivalling that necessary to an efficient police officer. "I'll tell you what he is," and the old dame directed her remarks to me. "He is the old chap Mrs Bray was sayin' ain't goin' to vote this time because the women has got one and the monkeys will be havin' one next. Just what the likes of him would say! He's a old crawler whose wife does all the work while he walks around an' tells how he killed the bear, an'

that's the sort of man who's always to be heard sayin' woman is a inferior animal that ought to be kep' on a chain as he thinks fit.

You'll never hear the kind of man like Bray (who is a man an' keeps his wife like a princess) sayin' that sort of thing--it's only the old Hollises and such. I'll tell you what old Hollis is. He got out of work here a few years back, w'en things was terrible dull, an' so his wife had to keep him, and with a child for every year they had been married. She rared chickens an' plucked 'em and sold 'em around the town, an' went without necessaries w'en she was nursin' to keep him in tobacco. That's the kind of man _he_ is, if you want to know. Of course, bein' a animal twice her superior, he had to go about suckin'

a pipe, and of course he couldn't deny hisself anythink. What do you think of that?"

"That its pathos lies in its commonness."

"I reckon you didn't hear of him goin' out an' pluckin' the fowls then an' sayin', 'Wife, a woman's place w'en she has a young family is in the house.' No fear! She worked at this poultry business, an' it was surprisin' how she got on--worked it up to a big poultry farm, till he took a hand in doin' a little of the work an' takin' _all_ the credit.

Now they live by it altogether; an' he was interviewed by the papers a little while ago, and it was blew about the reward of enterprise,--how he had started from nothink, an' it never said a word how she started an' rared his babies an' done it all, an' does most now, while he walks about to ill.u.s.trate what a superior bein' he is. That's the way with all the poultry industry. Women was the pioneers in it, an' now it's worked up to be payin', men has took it over and think they have done a stroke. Not so far back a man would consider hisself disgraced that knew one kind of fowls from another,--he would be thought a old molly-coddle. The women tried to keep a few hens an' the men always tried to kill them, an' said they'd ruin the place, an' at the same time they hunt them was always cryin' out an' gruntin' that there wasn't enough eggs to eat, an' why didn't the hens lay the same as they used w'en they was boys. They expected the women to rare them on nothink, or at odd moments, the same way as they expect them to do everythink else. Now, even the swells is gone hen mad, an' the papers are full of poultry bein' a great industry, but it was women started it."

Upon strolling abroad that morning we found a huge placard bearing the advice--"Vote for Olliver Henderson, M.L.A., the Local Candidate,"

decorating the post of the gateway through which we gained the highroad.

Uncle Jake was credited with this erection, so Andrew made himself absent at a time when there was need of his presence, and thereby caused a deal of friction in the vicinity of grandma, but with the result that by midday Uncle Jake's placard was covered by another, reading: "Vote for Leslie Walker, the Opposition Candidate, and Save the Country!"

At three o'clock this was obscured by a reappearance of Henderson's advertis.e.m.e.nt, which was the cause of Uncle Jake being too late to catch that evening's train with a load of oranges he had been set to pack. At the risk of leaving the milking late, Andrew was setting out to once more eclipse this by Walker's poster, only that grandma adjudicated regarding the matter.

"Jake, you have one side of the gate, an' Andrew you take the other.

Put up your papers side by side and that will be a good advertis.e.m.e.nt of liberty of opinion; an' Jake, if you haven't got sense to stick to this at your time of life, I'm sorry for you; and if you haven't Andrew at yours, I'll have to knock it into you with a strap,--now _mind_! An' if you don't get your work done you'll go to no more meetin's."

"Right O! I'll vote for me grandma every time," responded Andrew.

This proved an effective threat, for political meetings had become the joy of life to the electors of Noonoon. As a tallow candle if placed near can obscure the light of the moon, so the approaching election lying at the door shut out all other worldly doings. The Russo-j.a.panese war became a movement of no moment; the season, the price of lemons and oranges, the doings of Mrs Tinker, the inability of the munic.i.p.al council to make the roads good, and all other happenings, became tame by comparison with politics. They were discussed with unabating interest all day and every day, and by everyone upon all occasions. Even the children battled out differences regarding their respective candidates on the way home from school, rival committees worked with unflagging energy, and all buildings and fences were plastered with opposing placards. This pitch of enthusiasm was reached long before the sitting parliament had dissolved or a polling day had been fixed; for this State election was contested with unprecedented energy all over the country, but in no electorate was it more vigorously and, to its credit, more good-humouredly fought than in the fertile old valley of Noonoon.

It was the only chance the unfortunate electors had of bullying the lordly M.P.'s and would-be M.P.'s, who, once elected, would fatten on the parliamentary screw and pickings without showing any return, and right eagerly the electors took their present opportunity.

Zest was added to the contest by both the contestants being wealthy men, and with youth as well as means to carry it out on expensive lines. They were equally independent of parliament as a means of living, and being men of leisure were merely anxious for office to raise them from the rank and file of nonent.i.tyism. Independent means are a great advantage to a member of parliament. The penniless man elected on sheer merit, to whom the country could look for good things, becomes dependent upon politics for a living, is often handicapped by a family who are loth to leave the society and comfort to which their bread-winner's official position has raised them, and he, held by his affection, is ready to sacrifice all convictions and principle to remain in power. To this man politics becomes a desperate gamble, and the country's interests can go to the dogs so long as he can ensure re-election.

Another advantage in the Noonoon candidates which should have silenced the pessimists, who averred there were no good clean men to enter parliament, was that these men were both such exemplary citizens, morally, physically, and socially, that it seemed a sheer waste of goodness that only one could be elected.

The newspapers went politically mad, and those not any hysterical country rags, but the big metropolitan dailies, and there was one thing to be noted in regard to their statements that seriously needed rectifying. What is the purpose of the great dailies but to keep the people correctly informed as to the progress of public affairs and events of the community at large? Most of the people are too hard at work to forage information for themselves, or even to be thoroughly cognisant of that collected in the newspapers, and therefore parliamentary candidates, if not correct in their figures and statements, should be publicly arraigned for perjury. The Ministerialists gave one set of figures dealing with national financial statistics and the Oppositionists gave widely different. How was an elector to act when the platform of the former contained nothing but a few false statements and glowing promises, and the policy of the latter was only a few counter-acting war-whoops, and there was no honesty, common-sense, or matter-of-fact business in the campaign from end to end?

In this connection that remote rag, 'The Noonoon Advertiser,' shone as a reproach to its great contemporaries. Not by their grandeur and acclamations shall they be judged, but by the quality of their fruits.

No bias or spleen seemed to sway the mind of this journal to one side or the other. It recognised itself as a newspaper, not as a political tout for this party or that, and so kept its head cool and its honour bright and shining.

Three days after Leslie Walker's second speech he sent up a woman advocate to address _the ladies_ and start the business of house-to-house canva.s.sing. This plenipotentiary, a person of rather plethoric appearance, made herself extremely popular by a.s.suring every second _vote-lady_ she met that she was sure she (the vote-lady) was intended by nature for a public speaker. This worked without a hitch until the votresses began to tell each other what the great speaker had said, when it naturally followed that Mrs Dash, though she thought that Mrs Speaker had been discerning to discover this latent oratorical talent in herself, immediately had the effervescence taken out of her self-complacence on finding that that stupid Mrs Blank had been a.s.sured of equal ability.

Then the Ministerialists discovered Mrs Speaker's place of abode in Sydney, and averred her children ran about so untended as to be undistinguishable from aboriginals, and that her housekeeping was sending her husband to perdition; and such is the texture of human nature unearthed at political crises, that some even went so far as to suggest that she was a weakness of Walker's, and sneered at the _ladies'_ candidate who had to be "wet-nursed" in his campaign by women speakers. Henderson, they averred, had not to do this, but fought his own battle.

"Yes," said Grandma Clay; "he mightn't be wet-nursed, but he is bottled, _brandy_-bottled, by the men." And this could not be denied.

The women rallied round Walker because he was a temperance candidate, whereas the tag-rag rolled up _en ma.s.se_ for Henderson, who shouted free drinks and carried the publican's flag.

Each candidate, while praising his opponent, wound up with _but_--and after that conjunction spoke most d.a.m.ningly of his policy.

Underneath the ostensible war-whoops many private and personal cross-fires were at work to intensify the contest. The people on the land quite naturally had a grudge against the railway folk, who only had to work eight hours per day for more than a farmer could make in sixteen; further, the perquisites of the railway employes were inconceivable. By an unwritten but nevertheless imperative etiquette, farmers had to render them tribute in the form of a portion of whatever fruit or vegetables were consigned at Noonoon, and the townspeople also had little to say in favour of them, averring they were a floating population who had no interest in the welfare of the town in which they resided, were bad customers--patronising the publicans more than the storekeepers, and by means of their connection with the railway were able to buy their meat and other necessaries where they listed--where it was cheapest, and frequently this was otherwhere than Noonoon, and yet they were in such numbers that they could rule the political market.

Then the men on the Ministerial side were nearly gangrene with disgust, because, as one put it, "nearly all Walker's men were women,"

and rallied round him thick and strong, and with a thoroughness and energy worthy of their recent emanc.i.p.ation.

Dawn's next day for Sydney fell on another night when Leslie Walker was speaking, but she and I did not attend this meeting, the family being represented on this occasion by Andrew, and we went to bed and discussed the Sydney trip while waiting for his return.

Ernest Breslaw, it appeared, had again had urgent business in Sydney that day.

"Dawn," I said, "this is somewhat suspicious. Are you sure you are not flirting with Ernest? I can't have his wings singed; I think too much of him, and shall have to warn him that you are booked for 'Dora'

Eweword." This was said experimentally, for to do Dawn justice, though she had every temptation, she had nothing of the flirt in her composition.

"I can't go and say to him, 'Don't you fall in love with me,'" said Dawn contentiously.

"Are you sure he has never in any way attempted to pay you a lover's attentions?"

"Well, it's this way," she said confidentially--"you won't think me conceited if I tell you everything straight? There have been two or three men in love with me, and I was always able to see it straight away, long before _they_ knew; but with Ernest, sometimes he seems to be like they were, and then I'm afraid he's not,--at least not _afraid_--I don't care a hang, only I wonder does he think he can flirt with me, when he is so nice and just waltzes round the subject without coming up to it?"

Ah! ha! In that _afraid_, which she sought to recover, the young lady betrayed that her affections were in danger of leaving her and betaking themselves to a new ruler, and this sudden inability to see through another's state of mind towards her was a further sign that they were not secure.

We are very clear of vision as to the affection tendered us, so long as we remain unmoved, but once our feelings are stirred, their palpitating fears so smear our sight that it becomes unreliable.

"Oh, well, it does not matter to you," I said; "you are not likely to think of him, he's so unattractive, but I must take care that he does not grow fond of you. If I see any danger of it, I'll tell him something about you that will nip his affections in the bud. You won't mind me doing that--just some little thing that won't hurt you, but will save him unnecessary pain?" And to this she replied with seeming indifference--

"I wish you'd tell Dora Eweword something that would shoo him off that he'd never come back, and then I would have seen the last of him, which would be a treat."

After this we were silent, and I thought she had gone to sleep, for there was no sound until Andrew came tumbling up the stairs leading from his room.

"I say!" he called, "have you got any more of that toothache stuff from the dentist?"

"Come along," I answered, "I'll put some in for you."

"I think it's the oranges that's doin' it, I eat nearly eight dozen to-day."

"Enough to give you the pip; you ought to slack off a little," I said, extending him the courtesy of his own vernacular.

"I bet I'd vote for Henderson after all if I could," he continued, in referring to the meeting, "only I'll gammon I wouldn't just to nark Uncle Jake. Henderson is the men's man, that other bloke belongs to wimmen. You should have heard 'em to-night! The fellers behind was tip-top, and made such a noise at last that Walker could only talk to the wimmen in the front. We gave him slops because he gets wimmen up to speak for him, an' we can't give _them_ gyp. One man asked him was he in favour of ring-barkin' thistles, and another wanted to know was he in favour of puttin' a tax on caterpillars. He thinks no end of himself, because he's one of these Johnnies the wimmen always runs after," gravely explained Andrew, aged sixteen.