Electioneering matters ripened, and so did Carry's love affair with Larry Witcom. In fact it got so far that she gave grandma notice, and announced her intention of going to a married sister's home for that process known as "getting her things ready," while Larry, in keeping up his end of the stick, bought a neat cottage and began furnishing it in the style approved by his circle, with bright linoleum on the floors, plush chairs in the "parler," and china ornaments on the overmantels.

Mrs Bray, one of those very everyday folk whose god was mammon, and who naturally hung on every word issuing from a person of means while she would ignore the most inimitable witticism from an impecunious individual, began to regard the lady-help from a new point of view.

"She mightn't have done so bad for herself after all. Some of these girls knockin' about the world not havin' nothink to their name, don't baulk at things the same as you an' me would who's been used to plenty and like to pick our goods, so to speak. The way things is, Larry is as likely as most to be in a good position yet," was a sample of the modified sentiments falling from her full red lips.

Carry was to remain at Clay's until after the election day, so that she could cast her vote for Leslie Walker.

The political candidate thus favoured scarcely allowed three days to pass without personally or by proxy stumping the Noonoon end of the electorate. His last meeting in the Citizens' Hall was jam-pack an hour before the advertised time of speaking.

The candidate on this occasion made no fresh utterances to entertain, he merely repeated the catch cries of his party; but the air was heavily charged with human electricity, and the questions and "barracking" of the crowd were supremely diverting.

"Are you in favour of the Chows going to South Africa?" bawled one elector.

"My dear fellow, we are going to govern New South Wales—not South Africa."

"Yes; but when we sent contingents out to fight for the Empire in the Transvaal, do you think it fair that white men should be passed over in favour of Chows in the South African labour market?"

This question being ignored another was interjected.

"Are you in favour of the newspapers running New South Wales?"

"Certainly not!"

This being a satisfactory answer, the old favourite question, "Are you in favour of black gins wearing white stockings?" was put; and the candidate having assured us that, provided they could manage the laundry bill, he certainly was in favour of these ladies wearing any hosiery they preferred; and the loud guffaw which greeted this information having subsided, he continued—

"Now, don't vote for me or for Henderson,—vote for the best measures for the country. (Henderson was driving the personal ticket of having lived among them,—hence this warning.) I think it an unparalleled impertinence for a man to ask an intelligent body of electors to vote for him—"

"When there's a swell bloke like you in the field."

"Pip! pip! Hooray! Cock-a-doodle-do!" came the chorus. The "Pip! pip!" was a new sound to them, having been introduced to represent the noise made by the propulsion of a motor-car, in which set the candidate shone.

"Are you in favour of gas and water running up the one pipe?" inquired another, when the din had once more fallen to comparative silence.

"Don't you think that ladies ought to wear big boots now that they've got the vote?"

All such important questions having been put, the chairman called for three cheers for Mr Walker.

"Three cheers for Henderson," yelled the rabble at the back, which were given deafeningly, and the candidate, with the lively tact which bade fair to develop into his most prominent characteristic, joined in the cheers for his opponent, till some one had the grace to call "Three cheers for Mr Walker now"; and in the most delightfully uproarious, holiday-spirited clamour thus ended the last meeting but one before the election.

This was fixed for the 6th of August, and, notwithstanding there being several other towns in the electorate equally as important as Noonoon, on polling eve both candidates were to make their final speech there at the same hour.

During the week intervening, Leslie Walker's "Ladies' Committee" were very busy in the construction of dainty rosettes of pink and blue ribbon to be worn by his followers; and not to be outdone, Henderson's committee of "mere men" armed themselves with little squares of hatband ribbon of red, white, and blue—the Ministerial colours.

These were not such dainty badges as the rosettes, but they served the purpose equally well; and the sterner sex, in our present stage of evolution ever to be trusted to make up in downright usefulness what they lack in mere prettiness, had attached a safety-pin to each piece of ribbon for its masculinely substantial affixing.

II.

Polling eve arrived, and the Ministerialists having secured the hall, the Oppositionists had perforce to hold an open-air meeting. We attended the hall first, intending to move on to the street entertainment later, and Dawn was attacked by an old dame in the opposing camp because she was displaying Walker's colours.

"If I liked him I'd go an' stand in the street an' listen to him, not take up the room of them as has a hall hired for 'em by the best man, who has lived among us, and not some city lah-de-dah married to a hussy off the stage, an' who had women who might be any character goin' round speakin' for him," she tiraded, and turning to me aggressively demanded—

"Where are your colours?"

"Could you supply me with some?" I replied; and only too pleased, she squalled to an urchin who was distributing the squares plus a safety-pin. I was such a well-poised "rail-sitter" that I was entitled to wear both colours; and as this one was being ostentatiously fastened to the lapel of my over-jacket, I remembered the injunction to live at peace with all.

A brass band played the people in, and a trio of youngsters unfurled red, white, and blue parachutes,—alias gamps, alias ginghams, alias umberellers,—which were a popular feature of the "turn."

The committee appeared on the platform one by one, each received with noisy approval, and one facetiously wearing a rosette the size of a large cabbage was tendered a particularly deafening ovation.

After these crept Henderson, who, though not a particularly inspiring individual, was wildly and vociferously cheered for everything and nothing, and after listening awhile to his catch cries,—which differed from those of Walker only in the irritatingly halting and unimpressive way they were delivered,—we rose and scrambled our way out, jeered by the old dame as we went, and our departure was further commented upon from the platform by the speaker himself, in the words—

"Getting too hot for some of the ladies," which, if correct, could not by any means have been attributed to the winter air or the dull and weakly maudlin speech he was trying to deliver.

Walker spoke from a balcony crowded by devotees—mostly women—to an audience in the street, which was further enlivened by the fighting of the numerous dogs I have previously mentioned as addicted to holding municipal meetings. Their loud differences of opinion occasionally drowned the speakers, and the main street being also the public thoroughfare,—in fact, no less a place than the great Western Road,—there was no by-law or political etiquette to prevent the Ministerial band from strolling that way at intervals; so, much to the delight of all who were out for fun and the annoyance of those who were sensibly interested in the practical welfare of their country, and who imagined that the policy of this party would materially better matters, the cut-and-dried denouncement of the Ministry was at times drowned by the strains of "Molly Riley," "He's a Jolly Good Fellow," and "See the Conquering Hero Comes!"

The followers of Walker contended that Henderson was the worst of scorpions to thus come to Noonoon on the last night; but considering that he had only addressed Noonoon once to Walker's thrice, as an impartial wiggle-waggle I could not help seeing that the Ministerialists had most cause for complaint.

Dawn pinned the badge I had acquired to the coat-tail of a local bank manager who, though on her side, had lately distinguished himself by a public denouncement of "Women's Rights," so savagely virulent and idiotically tyrannous in principle as to suggest that his household contained representatives of the "shrieking sisterhood," who had been one too many for him. The boys who saw the joke enjoyed it very much indeed, as he strolled along with the self-importance befitting so prominent a citizen.

The beautiful voice of the candidate rose and fell, occasionally halting till the usual cheers or guffaws died away, and the meeting ended in the customary way. What good to the country was likely to accrue from it? On the other hand—what harm?

To be abroad in the open air with comfort at that time of the year, and at that hour of the night, illustrated the beautiful climate of that latitude if nothing more, and every one was harmlessly entertained, for good-humour characterised the whole affair.

Tea, coffee, and cheese abounded for all comers at the committee rooms of Leslie Walker—the candidate supported by the temperance societies; and on behalf of Olliver Henderson there was an "open night" at Jimmeny's "pub.," with the result—as published by the Oppositionists—that boys of fourteen and sixteen were lying drunk in the gutters.

The next day, however, was the culmination of the whole thing.

Dawn almost wept that she was not of age to vote, and as I was so comfortably indifferent as to which man won, I offered to cast my vote for the one she favoured, but she declined.

"That would only be the same as men having the vote and thinking they know how to represent us," she said.

But though she couldn't vote she worked hard for her side, and with a big rosette of pink and blue decorating her dimpling bosom, and streamers of the same flying from her whip and her pony's headstall, she was out all day driving voters to the booth, where for the first time in that town women produced an electoral right. The Federal election had been conducted without them.

In the forenoon Larry Witcom drove Carry to vote in state—otherwise a brand-new sulky he had recently purchased; and such is human nature that we were all sufficiently malicious to be secretly pleased that poor old Uncle Jake could not vote at all, because he had only an obsolete red elector's right, and he should have procured an up-to-date blue one.

It was a genial sunshiny day, and the lucerne and rape fields and the Chinese gardens on either hand were beautifully green, as grandma noticed when during the afternoon she and I drove in the old sulky to cast our vote.

"Poor Jake! I'm sorry he can't vote, though he ain't goin' for my man," she remarked. "But don't it seem like a judgment on him for bein' so narked about the women bein' set free? That's always the way in life. If you are spiteful about anythink it always comes back on yourself."

The street opposite the court-house—for the time converted into a polling-booth—was thronged like a show-day with an orderly crowd of citizens of both sexes. The voting had become so congested that vehicle loads of voters were being conveyed over to Kangaroo, and each contingent set out amid the cheers of small boys, who were most ardent politicians.

Laughing and banter were exchanged between people of all ages and classes, one as important as the other for the time being.

As we crowded round the door, a jovial-looking man with a twinkle in his eyes, as he was unceremoniously shoved against a pillar, announced that women should not have been allowed the vote, for its disastrous results were already evident in this crush; while the equally pleasant-faced policeman, who, as soon as intimation came from within that there was a vacancy, wheeled us in like so many bales of wool, replied—

"Women jolly well have as much right to vote as men, and more, because they can do it without getting drunk or breaking their heads."

Many displayed colours and some did not. There was the truculent woman who voted as she thought fit, and who loudly advertised this fact; the man who voted for Henderson because he lived in the district; and the woman who supported Leslie Walker because he was rich and would be able to subscribe liberally to all local institutions. A shallow-pated Miss favoured Walker because his colours were the prettier; and an addle-pated old man balanced this by voting for Henderson because he "shouted,"[1] and Walker was temperance. There was a silly little flaxen-haired woman who also supported the Opposition to spite her husband,—a Henderson man, and the prototype of Mr Pornsch,—because, being over-grogful, he had made tracks for the polling-booth alone, leaving his wife to go as best she could. Alas! there was a poor little woman at home who could not vote at all because she had succumbed to the gentlemanliness of Leslie Walker, and her husband being against him had tyrannously taken her right from her; and there was also the woman who would not vote at all, because she considered men were superior to women, and boisterously proclaimed this to all who would listen, in hopes of currying favour with the men; but fortunately this, in the case of the best men, is becoming an obsolete bid for popularity. There was the woman who voted for the man her father named, and those electors of each sex who voted to the best of their discernment great or small. Quite a crop of Uncle Jakes were disfranchised through their rights being back numbers, and the nobodies who imagined themselves something altogether too lofty to consider anything so mundane as law-making at all, were also rather numerous. Ada Grosvenor's bright happy face shone like a star amid her companions, and she discharged this duty honestly and thoughtfully as she did all others, recognising it as the practical way of working for the brave, bright ideals guiding her life.

[1] To treat to free drinks.