FORE:��Don��t be so optimistic. I may die instead.��

FORE:��Thank you so much, Mr Keeling,�� she said.{127} ��I shall be delighted to let you have the block if you feel like that about it. I will bring it back with me to-morrow, shall I?��

FORE:��No, I just want your promise that you won��t ask Mr Silverdale to Brighton,�� said Alice, unmoved by this withering sarcasm.

FORE:Keeling himself had no such craving to see in print all that he was perfectly well aware of, and even looked undazzled at the cards which{262} his wife had ordered, on one set of which he appeared alone as ��Sir Thomas Keeling, Bart.,�� to differentiate him from mere knights, whilst on the other the Bart. appeared in conjunction with her. But the events themselves filled him with a good deal of solid satisfaction, due largely to their bearing on the approaching election at the County Club. Never from a business point of view had there been a more successful ��timing�� of an enterprise: it was as if on the very day of his getting out his summer fashions, summer had come, with floods of hot sunshine that made irresistible to the ladies of Bracebridge the muslins and organdies and foulards that floated diaphanously in the freshly dressed windows. The summer of his munificence and his honours had just burst on the town, and, in spite of Lord Inverbroom��s warning, he felt, as he walked down to his office on the morning of the day on which the election took place, that every member of the Club would be, so to speak, a customer for his presence in future in those staid bow-windows. During these months of his Mayoralty, he had come into contact with, and had been at civic functions the host of a quantity of members of the County Club whose suffrages he sought to-day, and there was none among them who had not shown him courtesy and even deference. That no doubt was largely due to his position as mayor, but this Thomas Keeling who was a candidate for the Club was{263} the mayor, he who had given the new wing to the hospital, thereby averting a very unpleasant financial mess, he, too, whom his King had delighted to honour. To the business mind nothing could have happened more opportunely, and the business mind was his mind. He could not see how he could fail, after this bouquet of benefits and honours, to be ��an attractive proposition�� to any club. As he walked down to his office that morning he swept the cobweb of Lord Inverbroom��s apprehensions away, and wondered at himself for having allowed them to infect him with a moment��s uneasiness, or to make him consider, even at the very back of his brain, what he should do if he were not elected. This morning he did not consider that at all: he was sure that the contingency for which he had provided would not arrive. The provision was filed away, and with it, shut up in the dusty volume, was the suggestion his agent had made that he might quite reasonably raise the rent that the Club paid for the premises which were now his property. That business was just concluded; he proposed to inform Lord Inverbroom at once of the fact that he was now the landlord of the County Club, and that the question of a rise in the rental might be considered as shelved. Lord Inverbroom would be in Bracebridge this morning, since he would be presiding at the election at the Club at twelve o��clock, and had promised to communicate the result at{264} once. Very likely Keeling would drop in at the club to have a bit of lunch there, and he could get a chat with Lord Inverbroom then.... But as he slid upwards in the droning lift that took him to the floor where his office was, the Club, the election, and all connected with it, vanished from his brain like the dispersing mists on a summer morning, for a few steps would take him along the corridor to the room where Norah was opening his letters."Why not?" said Gregg, catching his breath.

FORE:

FORE:Alice Keeling had arrived at that stage of convalescence after her influenza when there is dawn on the wreck, and it seems faintly possible that the world will again eventually prove to contain more than temperature thermometers and beef-tea. She was going to leave Bracebridge with her mother next day for the projected fortnight at Brighton, and had tottered up and down the gravel path round the garden this morning for half an hour to accustom herself to air and locomotion again. While she was out, she had heard the telephone bell ring inside the house, a sound that always suggested to her nowadays an entrancing possibility, and this was confirmed when Parkinson came out to tell her that Mr Silverdale would like to speak to her. At that she ceased to totter: her feet positively twinkled on their way to the little round black ear of the machine. And the entrancing possibility was confirmed. Might Mr Silverdale drop in for the cup that cheered that afternoon? And was she better? And would she promise not to be naughty and get ill again? Indeed, she was vastly better on the moment, and said down the telephone in a voice still slightly hoarse, ��I��m not naughty: me dood,{199}�� in the baby-dialect much affected by her and Mr Silverdale."But you look real," objected Arthur.