Free Sweet and Twenty by Joan Smith

Fellows and Sara, Lillian’s eyes followed him.
    “Really a pretty fine hat,”Mr. Fellows was saying, holding it up and regarding it with admiration. “I daresay it might be taken for a Baxter, but I’ll be sure to tell them at Whitehall it was made by Saunders of Crockett.”
    Hudson glanced at Lillian, who could scarcely control her laughter. “I didn’t expect him to bother quoting me in this house, where my first lecture was overheard,”he said.
    “You put him up to that!”
    “Only to please Saunders. He is more likely to send Fellows to London if he thinks he will be a walking advertisement, you know.”
    “I know this campaign is not going to be as lily-pure as you let on. Already we have been subjected to bribery and outright lies.”
    “And I’ve only been here three days! What might I not be up to in the next three weeks?”
    “If I hear of a number of corpses littering the streets of Crockett, I shall know where to look for the murderer.”
    “Only if they’re Tory corpses. Come along, Tony, back to work. No rest for the wicked.”
    “He’s only funning, you know,”Tony assured the ladies. “It’s the Tories who are wicked, but we’ll show them. And when I go up to London to represent Crockett I will say that Crockett has the prettiest girls in England too, as well as the best craftsmen, right, Hudson?”
    “Right, Tony.”He smiled to see that Sara did not object to having her staggering beauty debased to the level of perfection of Mr. Saunders’s hat. But the other sharp-eyed little filly was laughing behind her prim lips. He winked at her and watched in amusement as she let on not to see it, glancing away quickly and then back at him with a questioning frown.
     

Chapter 6
     
    Aunt Martha’s pursuit of Mr. Fellows as a husband for Sara was by no means abated upon her discovering that he was a fool. In fact, his mentality was exactly suited to Sara’s own. She couldn’t think of anyone else who could tolerate either of them. She could seldom dislodge Lady Monteith from the house in the pursuit, but the girls were always happy to go into town, and Crockett was becoming a very interesting place these days. With all the merchants having so much extra money in their pockets, spirits were lively all over, and any day it was four pence to a groat that one or the other or even both of the candidates would be seen there in the midst of a group, laughing, talking, and shaking hands—usually at some point in the day strolling into the Cat’s Paw for a meal or to stand a round of drinks.
    Both candidates and their whippers-in considered themselves on fine terms with the ladies from New Moon, and would stop to chat with them if it was possible, but two days passed without Hudson and Fellows again calling at the house. In the interim, a Tory meeting took place at the Veterans’Hall, and one of the pieces of news heard in the town later was that the meeting had become rather rough. Mr. Alistair had been pelted with rotten apples, presumably not by Tories. But of course no one had so low opinion of either Tony or Hudson as to feel they were involved in it. It was some local people of the lower classes, and it was disgraceful.
    Between visits to Crockett and the surrounding countryside, Hudson and Fellows worked together in an effort to make Fellows conversant with the principles of his party. Having had a Tory father all his life, he had an unfortunate tendency to spout off Tory ideas. Mr. Hudson was worried about the large public meeting to be held at the Town Hall. On the day of the meeting, they stopped at New Moon and were of course asked how the campaign was going.
    “We’ve got them on the run,”Fellows said happily. “You heard about the rout at the Tory meeting? Alistair was rompéed entirely. He’ll not get a vote come November first, depend on it. If he was boo’d at a Tory meeting of corn-growers, you may imagine what his chances are tonight, when my supporters are out in