Roger for the first time, had a good chance against a weak rival, and it was now well known that Roger Benton, who had the hardest row to hoe, had the best chance any man had ever had against Mobray, the old Seddon lion. And so it was that to the delight of the North Mr. Massey gave it his last week, having no need to speak for himself in his own electorate, or about Auckland, which was his stronghold. And to the everlasting pride of Dargaville, he was to make his last speech there on election eve itself.
The two days of meditation and prayer allowed by the laws hardly sufficed to cool the heads of an electorate that had been bombarded with literature and canvassed from house to house many times over into its remotest back-block by all the parties in turn. The dear, gentle old lady who is the object of such solicitude at elections never lost her sense of fluster in spite of the benign intentions of paternal legislation. And though the blatant voice of the last moment agitator was silent throughout the land there was in those last two days a tremulous tenseness in the air, remarked by the oldest inhabitant of every settlement as something unprecedented in his whole experience.
There was indeed little let down in those days for Valerie. On the Monday morning Roger held his final committee meeting in the office. Neither he nor anyone else could think of an important thing that was not covered. The final details for the Massey meeting and for the dinner to him at Mac’s on the Wednesday night were gone over. The arrangements for that night’s meeting at Aratapu and Tuesday’s at Te Koperu were scanned for oversights. Dane’s last leader and inset were loudly praised. But though the committee found their labours practically over the little office hummed with news pouring in by telegram from all over the country, much more news than could be got into the available space, so that it had to be
