extra roar. Quickening her steps, she saw Jimmy dashing across the street with the first important batch of telegrams, and in a plain white envelope the registrar’s local figures for which the men upstairs were now frantically waiting. She darted after him and seized his arm.
The boy was bursting with delightful importance as the chief messenger of that eventful night. His most reliable runners were stationed at the post-office to carry the press news and such private wires as came to Roger from his friends, but he himself had the great job; he carried the official messages direct from the registrar to Bob, the only figures on which the announcements were based. Jimmy had looked forward to this night as the greatest thing in his life, he knew not why. He tried to be cool, as became a man in a crisis, but Valerie saw with delight that he could hardly contain within himself the emotions that the occasion roused.
“What results, Jimmy?” she whispered hoarsely, as they hurried together down the side of the building to a back entrance.
“Nothing big out yet, Miss Carr. But I think this is Dargaville,” and reverently he indicated the plain white envelope.
They went in by a door carefully guarded by several men, who smiled with the ready smile of friend passing friend on a day of great matters.
“Oh, it’s grand, isn’t it?” exploded Jimmy, half under his breath. “If only Benton and Massey win.” And for a moment the awful possibility that they might not choked him. His heart was with his paper and his side, and he knew that if they lost his heart would be broken.
“They’ll win all right,” said Valerie hopefully, amused to see she was becoming an optimism herself.
They hurried up a narrow stairway lit by smelly kero-
