"Dead earnest!" Mr. Bundercombe regretted. "The chap's convinced me. I feel it's up to me to lend him a hand." "But surely," I expostulated, "even if you cannot see your way clear to help me, there's no need for you to go over to the enemy like this! You're not obliged to interfere in the election at all, are you?" Mr. Bundercombe sighed. "Matter of principle with me!" he explained. "I must be doing something. I can't canvass for you. I'll have to look round a bit for the other chap." "I really don't see," I began, just a little annoyed, "why you should feel called upon to interfere in an English election at all, unless it is to help a friend." Mr. Bundercombe looked at me and solemnly winked! "Say, that's the dinner gong!" he announced cheerfully. "Let's be getting in." "But I don't quite understand----" Mr. Bundercombe repeated the wink upon a smaller scale. I followed him into the drawing-room, still in the dark as to his exact political position. The movements of my prospective father-in-law were, for the next few days, wrapped in a certain mystery. He arrived home one evening, however, in a state of extreme indignation. As usual when anything had happened to upset him he came to look for me in the library. "My boy," he said, "of all the God-forsaken, out-of-the-world, benighted holes, this Bildborough of yours absolutely takes the cake! For sheer ignorance --for sheer, thick-headed, bumptious, arrogant ignorance--give me your farmers!" "What's wrong?" I asked him. "Wrong? Listen!" he exclaimed, almost dramatically. "In this district--in this whole district, mind--there is not a single farmer who has heard of Bundercombe's Reapers!" "I farm a bit myself," I reminded him, "and I had never heard of them." Mr. Bundercombe went to the sideboard and mixed himself a cocktail with great care. "Bundercombe's Reapers," he said, as soon as he had disposed of it, "are the only reapers used by live farmers in the United States of America, Canada, Australia, or any other country worth a cent!" "That seems to hit us pretty hard," I remarked. "Have you got an agent over here?" "Sure!" Mr. Bundercombe replied. "I don't follow the sales now, so I can't tell you what he's doing; but we've an agent here--and any country that doesn't buy Bundercombe's Reapers is off the line as regards agriculture!" "What are you going to do about it?" I asked. "Do!" Mr. Bundercombe toyed with his wine glass for a moment and then set it down. "What I have done," he announced, "is this: I have wired to my agent. I have ordered him to ship half a dozen machines--if necessary on a special train--and I am going to give an exhibition on some land I have hired, over by Little Bildborough, the day after tomorrow." "That's the day of the election!" I exclaimed. "You couldn't put it off, I suppose?" he suggested. "That's the day I've fixed for my exhibition at any rate. I am giving the farmers a free lunch --slap-up affair it's going to be, I can tell you!"