Everybody watched Bob who jotted down figures and frowned over them. At last he raised his face.
“You lead here by 237, Benton. But the figures represent far more than this town. The beggars have come here from other places to vote. That will throw us out now. We don’t know where they have come from. But there it is, a good lead.” He handed Roger the paper.
Those present took it in various ways, doubtfully or enthusiastically, as was their disposition, but all agreed it was a good start. Valerie sat down beside Bob and helped him to open and check the other items.
It is the number and the smallness of the returns in country electorates that provide in any closely contested election a few hours’ wild fun for the waiting crowds. There may often be no more than a dozen votes recorded in a small booth on a gumfield. These are easily counted, but the result has to be got to a post-office perhaps ten miles away, and the thing to do is to get it there before the congestion starts up on the main lines, because once the big places begin to send out their returns the little ones have to wait. And this waiting throws a number of small but very telling results, that have been counted in the first quarter of an hour, right out of reckoning till two or three in the morning. Roger had the largest and most scattered electorate in the whole country, and the bulk of his figures were to come from little places. And only a dozen of these small counts had managed to get through to Dargaville before the wires began to rush through the leads and prospects of men all over the dominion.
Valerie and Bob opened and counted and checked these, and added them to Roger’s local majority. This started him off with a lead of 264, and half the room escorted the slip for the lantern into the front and waited to see
