"I'm going round there," said Jeff, "to congratulate his mother. It's her campaign, you know. He never'd have run if it hadn't been for her." "I didn't know Mrs. Choate had any such interest in local affairs," said Amabel. She was aware Jeff was smoothing her down, ruffled feather after feather, and she was pathetically grateful. If she hadn't kept a strong grip on herself, her lip would have been quivering still. "In a way she's not. She doesn't care about Addington as we do, but she hates to see old traditions go to the dogs. I've an idea she'll stand behind Alston and really run the show. Put on your bonnet and come with me. It's a shame to stay in the house a night like this." She still knew his purpose and acquiesced in it. He hated to leave her to solitary thoughts of the indignity Moore had offered her, and also she hated to be left. She put on her thick cloak and her bonnet--there were no assumptions with Miss Amabel that she wasn't over sixty--and they went forth. But Mrs. Choate was not at home, nor was Mary. The maid thought they had gone down town for the return. Jeff told her Mr. Choate was to be mayor--no one in Addington seemed to pay much attention to the rest of the ticket that year--and she returned quite prosaically, "God save us!" "Save us from Alston?" asked Jeff, as they went away, and Miss Amabel forgot Moore and laughed. They went on down town with the purpose of seeing life, as Jeff said, and got into a surge of shiny-eyed Mill Enders who looked to Jeff as if they were commiserating him although it was his candidate that won. Andrea, indeed, in the moment of their meeting and parting almost wept over him. And face to face they met Lydia. "I've lost Farvie," she said, "and Anne. Can't I come with you?" So they went on together, Lydia much excited and Miss Amabel puzzled, in her wistful way, at finding social Addington and working Addington shoulder to shoulder in their extraordinary interest in the election though never in the common roads of life. "But why the deuce," said Jeff, "Andrea and his gang look so mournful I can't see." "Why," said Lydia, "don't you know? They voted for you, and their votes were thrown out." "For me?" "Yes, Madame Beattie told them to. She'd planned it before she went away, but somehow it fell through. They were to put stickers on the ballot, but at the last the stickers scared them, and they just wrote in your name." "Lydia," said Jeff, "you're making this up." "Oh, no, I'm not," said Lydia. "Mr. Choate told me. I knew it was going to happen, but he's just told me how it was. They wrote 'Prisoner Blake' in all kinds of scrawls and skriggles. They didn't know they'd got to write your real name. I call it a joke on Madame Beattie."