Politics in and about Jordanville were accepted as a purely masculine interest.  If you had asked Mrs Crow to take a hand in them she would have thanked you with sarcasm, and said she thought she had about enough to do as it was.  The school-house, on the night of such a meeting as this, was recognized to be no place for ladies.  It was a man’s affair, left to the men, and the appearance there of the other sex would have been greeted with remark and levity.  Elgin, as we know, was more sophisticated in every way, plenty of ladies attended political meetings in the Drill Shed, where seats as likely as not would be reserved for them; plenty of handkerchiefs waved there for the encouragement of the hero of the evening.  They did not kiss him; British phlegm, so far, had stayed that demonstration at the southern border.

The ladies of Elgin, however, drew the line somewhere, drew it at country meetings.  Mrs Farquharson went with her husband because, since his state of health had handed him over to her more than ever, she saw it a part of her wifely duty.  His retirement had been decided upon for the spring, but she would be on hand to retire him at any earlier moment should the necessity arise.  “We’ll be the only female creatures there, my dear,” she had said to Dora on the way out, and Hesketh had praised them both for public spirit.  He didn’t know, he said, how anybody would get elected in England without the ladies, especially in the villages, where the people were obliged to listen respectfully.

“I wonder you can afford to throw away all the influence you get in the rural districts with soup and blankets,” he said; “but this is an extravagant country in many ways.”  Dora kept silence, not being sure of the social prestige bound up with the distribution of soup and blankets, but Mrs Farquharson set him sharply right.

“I guess we’d rather do without our influence if it came to that,” she said.

Hesketh listened with deference to her account of the rural district which had as yet produced no Ladies Bountiful, made mental notes of several points, and placed her privately as a woman of more than ordinary intelligence.  I have always claimed for Hesketh an open mind; he was filling it now, to its capacity, with care and satisfaction.

The schoolroom was full and waiting when they arrived.  Jordanville had been well billed, and the posters held, in addition to the conspicuous names of Farquharson and Murchison, that of Mr Alfred Hesketh (of London, England).  There was a “send-off” to give to the retiring member, there was a critical inspection to make of the new candidate, and there was Mr Alfred Hesketh, of London, England, and whatever he might signify.  They were big, quiet, expectant fellows, with less sophistication and polemic than their American counterparts, less stolid aggressiveness than their parallels in England, if they have parallels there.  They stood, indeed, for the development