for his last fling. In spite of Valerie’s fears that it would look bizarre it was a fine and arresting piece of printing, set up and balanced in Johnson’s best style, and as far as Dane was concerned its arguments were as hot as its colour. He had spent the best part of a day on it. It was mainly an appeal to labour, the labour of the bushes and the mills, and it delicately flattered the workingman by appealing to his intelligence as well as to his emotions. It had cleverly gathered up every good thing that could be said for a change; it neatly recorded the main deficiencies of the Liberal Party in the matter of promises to the worker, but above all it appealed to the northerner to get attention for the land he had made his own.
“That ought to make ’em sit up,” said Ryder in his dry way as he looked at Dane. Both he and Johnson had come to enormously admire him, not only because of his work, which they were quite capable of appreciating, but even more because of the way he had gone about the office. Indeed, the little group was a good deal of a mutual admiration society as it stood there with the curious hesitancy of people who have seen each other through a considerable piece of work with brains and patience and humour, and want to say something about it, but do not know what to say. The feeling seemed to centre about Dane because he was there for the last time in the place of Bob who would be back in his old chair on the Monday morning.
Jimmy gazed at his elders in turn with a boundless admiration and pride in the fact that he was here in at the finish with the rest of them. He had got over his first antipathy to Dane. No boy could have held out long against the subtle flattery of the man’s approval. For Dane took a huge joy in Jimmy, and of them all he most established the boy as man in his own eyes, for he never ordered him about, and he asked his opinion about weighty
