“I will. The break will help me to get through the night. Pick me up the other side of the railway wharf.”
He looked better at once and slipped quietly out.
As she walked along towards the railway station to meet him she thought of the frenzied counting that had now begun behind locked doors all over the country, in remote schoolhouses, little town halls, creameries, and even private houses, where in the scattered settlements the government considered the convenience of those who had long distances to go. And in the larger centres she could visualize the groups checking and rechecking those columns of figures, so important to the careers of a few men, so unimportant in the great welter of world affairs. It seemed funny that those figures should matter so much.
She passed several people riding and driving in, and she sauntered slowly to let them all go by before she ran for the Diana which she could just see hidden in the rushes. She sat down in the stern with Dane and put an arm round him, and did not attempt to talk. He set his engine at full speed. Round the first turn they saw close upon them a big timber barque riding low, and being towed down on the evening tide, bound for Australia, the men on her decks curiously remote from the fuss of the New Zealand election. They would go out to sea that night oblivious of the results that seemed so epoch-making to the wrought-up feelings of Dargaville.
The sight of that stately vessel filigreed against an opal sky lifted part of the cloud from Dane’s mind. As he ran the launch close past her the friendly faces of officers and seamen grinned down upon them.
Then, oblivious of the fact that men on the barque might be looking after them, he put his unoccupied arm about her and his head against her shoulder, and felt better.
