The day wore on, but still the tireless cars ran in and out, and smiling ladies were dug from dark corners in strange garments that seldom saw the sun. After six o’clock the rush quickened again until closing-time at eight, and then, under the fallen curtain of night, began the weary wait during the count. The crowd that had ebbed and flowed all day now drifted back, and where the motor-lamps flung their rays, familiar faces stood out whitely. The door of the booth had shut with a final click as the last strokes from the church clock died, and the mean face of the Creeping Jesus had peered out for the last time. The black figures hung patiently round the railings, while the slow half-hours spoke over their heads. In the grouped cars the weary canvassers turned anxious eyes to the one bright window of the dark building. Grumphy alone slumbered soundly, with a fat head laid on the knee of the yawning chauffeur. It was very chill and dismal, and the lights ringing the square seemed lost in separate hollows of gloom. Dandy was sitting in the Austin with Helwise and Wiggie, exchanging conversation with the doctor and his wife, who had given them tea; and the passage of the fateful minutes filled her with vague depression. Close to the Austin’s lamps her father was standing with Bluecaster and Lanty’s clerk, Stubbs leaning against the door, and it struck her that they all looked worried. The clerk was talking rapidly in a low voice, hammering in his statements fist on palm, while Bluecaster nodded assent from time to time. The shrieking children playing on the outskirts of the crowd quietened suddenly, and the clerk’s words came up sharply over the car. “It doesn’t do to take a thing for granted with the women! There’s never any getting at what they understand and what they don’t. You can explain till you’re black in the face, and then have to start at the beginning and say it all over again. Why, at the Parish Council Elections, I’ve known them stick their mark against every man-jack on the card, though the whole boiling had been at them telling them they could only vote for nine! They do other daft things, too--put the cross half-way between a couple of names, or plump for the very man they don’t want, thinking it’ll out him, and then swear afterwards that you told ’em to do it! I don’t know what sort you breed in Lancashire, Mr. Shaw, but some of our lot up here want a lot of looking after. A deal of them don’t bother much about politics in between election-times, and I’m not saying they’re any the worse for that; but it makes it a bit stiff working with them when it comes to the vote. You’ve got to be dead sure that they know what you want of them, and then you have to go back and see that they haven’t got it upside down in the meantime! I may be wrong, sir, and nobody’s wishing it harder than myself, but I’m very much afraid that you’ve gone and done it, this time, without meaning to. It’ll be a bad day for Bluecaster, if you have!”