“Of course I thought, in fact we all thought, that she was referring to Vittie and O’Donoghue, especially Vittie. The boys at the back of the hall, who hate Vittie worse than the devil, nearly raised the roof off with the way they shouted. I could see that McMeekin didn’t half like it. He’s rather given himself away by supporting Vittie. Well, as long as the cheering went on Miss Beresford stood and smiled at them. She’s a remarkably well set up girl so the boys went on cheering just for the pleasure of looking at her. When they couldn’t cheer any more she started off to prove what she said. She began with O’Donoghue and she got in on him. She had a list as long as your arm of the whoppers he and the rest of that pack of blackguards are perpetually ramming down people’s throats. Home Rule, you know, and all that sort of blasted rot. Then she took the skin off Vittie for about ten minutes. Man, but it would have done you good to hear her. The most innocent sort of remark Vittie ever made in his life she got a twist on it so that it came out a regular howling lie. She finished him off by saying that Ananias and Sapphira were a gentleman and a lady compared to the ordinary Liberal, because they had the decency to drop down dead when they’d finished, whereas Vittie’s friends simply went on and told more. By that time there wasn’t one in the hall could do more than croak, they’d got so hoarse with all the cheering. I might have been in a bath myself with the way the sweat was running off me, hot sweat.” Titherington paused, for the nurse knocked at the door again. This time he got up and let her in. Then he went on with his story. “The next minute,” he said, “it was frozen on me.” “The sweat?” Titherington nodded. “Go on,” I said. “She went on all right. You’ll hardly believe it, but when she’d finished with O’Donoghue and Vittie she went on to----” “Me, I suppose.” “No. Me,” said Titherington. “She said she didn’t blame you in the least because she didn’t think you had sense enough to lie like a real politician, and that those two letters about the Temperance Question----” “She’d got ahold of those?”