Look at wool—six shillings a stone, and prime fat Leicesters going for a pound a piece.”

“What should wool be?” asked Lovell, suspicious of all tales of agricultural difficulty. He believed farmers to be unfairly pampered by a sentimental government.

“Why, before the War you got eight to eighteen shillings. I’ve known it thirty-four once. Maythorpe’s a big place, but Carne can’t lose on farm, and pay all that for his wife and keep going.”

There was a stir in the hall.

“They’re coming back.”

A door opened under the gallery, and the Councillors filed back to their places. One man looked at Mrs. Beddows and slowly shook his head. The big handsome Carne clumped down again in the seat beside her. Another man handed a paper to the chairman. He rose and read something, and this time even Lovell could catch the words:

“. . . Councillor Astell 5, Councillor Carne 4.”

“That’s torn it. . . .”

“Dirty work somewhere. . . .

“One up to Snaith.”

Papers were being handed round. All the Councillors present were now voting. There was no excitement, no apparent concern. Snaith’s grey, precise, well-cut features wore no look of triumph when Astell was declared the new alderman for the Cold Harbour Division. No applause followed. If dirty work had been done, it left no trace on the ordered monotony of the proceedings.

The chairman of the Education Committee moved that the resolutions on his minutes should be approved and confirmed. The newly appointed alderman rose and complained about the cutting down of maintenance allowances to scholarship and free place holders. He was a tall thin man with curling ruddy hair and a girlish pretty complexion. When he spoke, his voice was singularly harsh and unattractive. Lovell, prepared to find in the one socialist alderman a hero and a martyr, was disappointed. Shelley, he told himself, had a high shrill voice. But Councillor Astell did not look like Shelley. There was about him something ungainly yet impressive, a queer chap, Lovell thought.

The Mental Hospital business appropriately followed that of the Education Committee.