"This doesn't quite compare with nine hours a day over a sewing machine, with a hundred other girls packed into a small room," she reminded him.

"No, I haven't been overworking. I almost wished, an hour ago, that I could find something more to do."

"Why didn't you go out?"

"To-morrow night is Guild night," she said. "I go out then to talk to my girls. Miss Stevens is coming from the Lyceum Club to lecture to us on Woman's Suffrage."

"Do you want a vote?" he asked.

"If it comes,"' she replied. "It isn't worth worrying about. I like my girls, though, to be taught to think."

There was a brief silence. Maraton was still examining the letters laid out for his inspection. Julia was standing by his side. As the last one slipped through his fingers, he turned quickly towards her, oppressed by some mysterious significance in her silence. Her eyes were luminous. She seemed to be trembling. She avoided his enquiring glance.

"Julia!" he exclaimed.

She lifted her head slowly, almost unwillingly. Though her lips were parted, she made no attempt at speech. Then the door was suddenly opened. Aaron entered in some excitement.

"Mr. Dale and some of the others are here now, sir," he announced. "I heard they were on their way when I telephoned. They would like to see you at once."

Maraton stood for a moment quite still, without replying. Aaron gazed across the table in some surprise.

"What shall I say to them?" he asked. "They are here now."

Maraton shrugged his shoulders.

"Let them come in," he directed.

CHAPTER XXIV

The three men--Peter Dale, Abraham Weavel and Graveling filed into the room a little solemnly. Maraton shook hands with the two former, but Graveling, who kept his head turned away from Julia, affected not to notice Maraton's friendly overtures.

"So you managed it all right," Peter Dale remarked. "Pretty close fit, wasn't it?"

"Seven hundred," Maraton replied. "Not so bad, considering. You see, I was a complete stranger and I am not sure that I have learnt the knack yet of that sort of platform speaking."

"However that may be," Abraham Weavel declared, accepting a cigar from the box which Maraton had ordered, and standing with his hands underneath his coat-tails upon the hearthrug, "you've done the trick.

You're an M.P., same as we are."

"You've no objection, I hope?" Maraton remarked lightly.

"That's as may be," Mr. Weavel observed sententiously. "We don't, so to speak, know exactly where we are just at this moment. There's all sorts of rumours going about, and we want them cleared up. Go on, Dale, ask him the first question. You're spokesman, you know."

Mr. Peter Dale threw away the match with which he had just lit his pipe, sampled the whiskey and water to which he had helped himself with a most liberal hand, and deliberately selected the most comfortable chair within reach. With his hands in his trousers pockets, the thumbs protruding, his pipe in the left-hand corner of his mouth, his eyebrows drawn close together, he looked steadfastly towards Maraton.

"The first question," he began stolidly, "is this. You owe your seat in Parliament to the Unionists. What have you promised them in return?

You haven't attempted to commit us to anything, I hope?"

"Certainly not," Maraton replied. "Such an idea never occurred to me.

So far as I know," he went on, after a moment's hesitation, "Mr. Foley is not, at the moment, in need of your support. His majority is sufficient."

Peter Dale frowned ominously.

"That may or may not be," he remarked gruffly. "So long as you haven't taken it upon yourself to pledge us to anything, well, that disposes of question number one. The next is, where are you going to sit in the House?"

Maraton's eyebrows were slightly raised.

"Where am I going to sit?" he repeated. "Remember, if you please, that as a member I have never been inside your House of Commons. I am not acquainted with its procedure. Where, in your opinion, ought I to sit?"

"Your place is with us," Peter Dale declared. "I can't see that there's any doubt about that."

"And why?"

"You're a Labour man, aren't you?" Peter Dale asked. "You call yourself one, anyway.

"If I am a Labour man," Maraton said, "why did you put up a candidate to oppose me at Nottingham?"

Peter Dale smoked steadily for several moments.

"It was nowt to do with me," he announced. "The fellow sprung up all on his own, as it were. Graveling here may have known something of it, but so far as we are concerned he was not an authorised candidate."

Maraton shrugged his shoulders slightly.

"There was nothing," he objected, "to convey that idea to the electors.

He made use of the Labour agent and the Labour committee rooms. My telegram to you remained unanswered. Under those circ.u.mstances, I really can scarcely see how you find it possible to disown him."

"In any case," Abraham Weavel intervened, with conciliation in his tone, "he didn't do himself a bit a' good nor you a bit of harm. Four hundred and thirty votes he polled out of eight thousand, and those were votes which otherwise would have gone to the Liberal. I should say myself that it did you good, if anything."

"You may be right," Maraton admitted. "At the same time, one thing is very clear. You did not offer me the slightest official support. It is true that I did not ask for it. I prefer, as I have told you all along, my independence. It will be my object to continue without direct a.s.sociation with any party. If I can find a place in the house allotted to Independent Members, I shall sit there. If not, I shall sit with the Unionists."

Peter Dale's face darkened. This was what they had feared.

"You mean that you're breaking away from us?" he exclaimed angrily.

"There's no room in our little party for Independent Members, no sort of sense in a mere handful of us all pulling different ways."

"I never joined your party, Mr. Dale," Maraton reminded him. "I have never joined any man's party. I am for the people."

"And what about us?" Graveling demanded. "Aren't we for the people?

Isn't that what we're in Parliament for? Isn't that why we are called Labour Members?"

Maraton regarded the last speaker steadily.

"Mr. Graveling," he said, "since you have mooted the question, I will admit that I do not consider you, as a body of men, entirely devoted to the cause of the people. You are each devoted to your own const.i.tuency.

It is your business to look after the few thousand voters who sent you into Parliament, and in your eagerness to serve and please them, I think that you sometimes forget the greater, the more universal truths. I may be wrong. That is how the matter seems to me."

"Then since you're so frank," Peter Dale declared, with undiminished wrath, "I'll just imitate your candour! I'll tell you how you seem to us. You seem like a man with a gift, whose head has been turned by Mr.

Foley and his fine friends. You're full of great phrases, but there's nothing practical about them or you. You're on your way to an easy place for yourself in the world, and a seat in Foley's Cabinet."

"Have you any objection," Maraton asked, "to the people's cause being represented in the Cabinet?"