Bluecaster affairs were keeping Lanty very busy just at this time, sending him to London more than once, and otherwise pinning him to his office, so that the electorate saw little of him and his particular friends less. His clerk, a young person of enthusiasms, with a vivid admiration for everything Blue--and Lancastrian, scamped his meal-hours in order to put in a little electioneering on his own, but he generally returned convinced that he had risked his digestion for nothing. The men he interviewed assured him that as long as a Lancaster was putting up he could be certain of their word. Happen they’d vote for Miss Harriet as well--Mr. Shaw (him over at Watters) seemed to think they ought to be having her on, and they weren’t saying but she’d her head set straight enough on her shoulders for a lass, and they’d all thought a deal of the old man, and pity there weren’t a few more like him--but Mr. Lancaster anyhow could be sure of their cross when the time came--ay, that he could! But he never got as far as the women, and indeed he never worried about them at all. The women always voted for Lanty, because he was young and unmarried. The clerk had a penchant for the study of human nature, and rather fancied he knew all about women--at least, politically. Perhaps he did; but straws may blow different ways in the same wind. The poll opened on a Monday at twelve, but long before that hour the Watters cars--the limousine, driven by the chauffeur, and Dandy’s little Delage cheeping like a scurrying chick behind Hamer in the touring Austin--were running through the ring of villages. They made quite an effective little procession, carrying Stubbs’ old racing colours flying from the screens, and wonderful placards devised by Hamer: “Wild Duck Wins!” “Vote for the Old Stock!” “Help for Harriet!” etc. The candidate, rolling down the hill in the float five minutes after noon, with no more ostentation than lay in shining harness in front of her and a well-trimmed Stubbs at her side, frowned a little at the flaunting gaiety before the booth; but objection was impossible in face of Hamer’s joyful excitement as he hurried to her with outstretched hand. Thorne’s thin, furtive countenance could be seen peering round the doorpost for the children he had stationed at the gate with milkcans labelled “Watered Wild Duck.” He was puzzled to know why the war-cry arranged for Harriet’s arrival had missed fire, but the reason was not far to seek. On the front seat of the limousine sat Grumphy, very black and fat and swathed in ribbon, with a collar of snowdrops round his neck and a red rose nodding over his ear, smiling eternally at the wondering childish faces below. Inside the booth the polling-clerk greeted the lady-farmer with polite amusement tinged with admiration, and the early voters, brought in by the Watters contingent, shook her warmly by the hand. Even Thorne offered her the same pledge of goodwill, and she returned it brusquely.