at the leading hotels.  Their business was various, but they had one point in common:  they were very solicitous about their personal luggage.  I should be sorry to assign their politics, and none of them seemed to know much about the merits of the candidates, so they are not perhaps very pertinent, except for the curiosity shown by the public at the spectacle of gentlemen carrying their own bags when there were porters to do it.

It was a day long remembered and long quoted.  The weather was spring-like, sun after a week’s thaw; it was pleasant to be abroad in the relaxed air and the drying streets, that here and there sent up threads of steam after the winter house-cleaning of their wooden sidewalks.  Voting was a privilege never unappreciated in Elgin; and today the weather brought out every soul to the polls; the ladies of his family waiting, in many instances, on the verandah, with shawls over their heads, to hear the report of how the fight was going.  Abby saw Dr Harry back in his consulting room, and Dr Henry safely off to vote, and then took the two children and went over to her father’s house because she simply could not endure the suspense anywhere else.  The adventurous Stella picketed herself at a corner near the empty grocery which served as a polling-booth for Subdivision Eleven, one of the most doubtful, but was forced to retire at the sight of the first carryall full of men from the Milburn Boiler Company flaunting a banner inscribed “We are Solid for W.W.”  Met in the hall by her sister, she protested that she hadn’t cried till she got inside the gate, anyhow.  Abby lectured her soundly on her want of proper pride:  she was much too big a girl to be “seen around” on a day when her brother was “running,” if it were only for school trustee.  The other ladies of the family, having acquired proper pride kept in the back of the house so as not to be tempted to look out of the front windows.  Mrs Murchison assumed a stoical demeanour and made a pudding; though there was no reason to help Eliza, who was sufficiently lacking in proper pride to ask the milkman whether Mr Lorne wasn’t sure to be elected down there now.  The milkman said he guessed the best man ’ud get in, but in a manner which roused general suspicion as to which he had himself favoured.

“We’ll finish the month,” said Mrs Murchison, “and then not another quart do we take from him—­a gentleman that’s so uncertain when he’s asked a simple question.”

The butcher came, and brought a jovial report without being asked for it; said he was the first man to hand in a paper at his place, but they were piling up there in great shape for Mr Murchison when he left.

“If he gets in, he gets in,” said Mrs Murchison.  “And if he doesn’t it won’t be because of not deserving to.  Those were real nice cutlets yesterday, Mr Price, and you had better send us a sirloin for tomorrow, about six pounds; but it doesn’t matter to an ounce.  And you can save us sweetbreads for Sunday; I like yours better than Luff’s.”