Old Sandy MacQuhot was in a good place; had been since six o'clock, and Peter Macfarlane, too, for that matter, though Peter sat away back as beseemed a modest functionary whose business was with the book and the bell.
Altogether, as Horace Williams leaned over to tell him, it was like a Knox Church sociable--he could feel completely at home; and though the audience was by no means confined to Knox Church, Lorne did feel at home.

Dora Milburn's countenance he might perhaps have missed, but Dora was absent by arrangement.

Mr Milburn, as the fight went on, had shown himself so increasingly bitter, to the point of writing letters in the Mercury attacking Wallingham and the Liberal leaders of South Fox, that his daughter felt an insurmountable delicacy in attending even Lorne's "big meeting." Alfred Hesketh meant to have gone, but it was ten by the Milburns' drawing-room clock before he remembered.

Miss Filkin actually did go, and brought home a great report of it.

Miss Filkin would no more have missed a Minister than she would a bishop; but she was the only one.
Lorne had prepared for this occasion for a long time.