The owner of the hand flung himself down on the seat, with a word of
apology, took off his hat, and drew a long breath of fatigue. At the same
moment a sudden look of disgust effaced the smile with which he had taken
his last glimpse at the crowd.

"All very well!--but what one wants after this business is _a moral tub_!
The lies I've told during the last three weeks--the bunkum I've
talked!--it's a feeling of positive dirt! And the worst of it is, however
you may scrub your mind afterwards, some of it must stick."

He took out a cigarette, and lit it at his companion's with a rather
unsteady hand. He had a thin, long face and fair hair; and one would have
guessed him some ten years younger than the man beside him.

"Certainly--it will stick," said the other. "Election promises nowadays
are sharply looked after. I heard no bunkum. As far as I know, our party
doesn't talk any. We leave that to the Government!"

Sir George Tressady, the young man addressed, shrugged his shoulders. His
mouth was still twitching under the influence of nervous excitement. But
as they rolled along between the dark hedges, the carriage-lamps shining
on their wet branches, green yet, in spite of November, he began to
recover a half-cynical self-control. The poll for the Market Malford
Division of West Mercia had been declared that afternoon, between two and
three o'clock, after a hotly contested election; he, as the successful
candidate by a very narrow majority, had since addressed a shouting mob
from the balcony of the Greyhound Hotel, had suffered the usual taking
out of horses and triumphal dragging through the town, and was now
returning with his supporter and party-leader, Lord Fontenoy, to the