'This is a watery Sabbath to you, I'm thinking,' she said
sympathetically, but without dropping her wires - for Home Rule or
no Home Rule that stocking-foot must be turned before twelve
o'clock.
A watery Sabbath means a doleful day, and 'A watery Sabbath it is,'
he replied with feeling. A silence followed, broken only by the
click of the wires. Now and again he would mutter, 'Ay, well, I'll
be going to vote - little did I think the day would come,' and so
on, but if he rose it was only to sit down again, and at last she
crossed over to him and said softly, (no sarcasm in her voice now),
'Away with you, and vote for Gladstone's man!' He jumped up and
made off without a word, but from the east window we watched him
strutting down the brae. I laughed, but she said, 'I'm no sure
that it's a laughing matter,' and afterwards, 'I would have liked
fine to be that Gladstone's mother.'
It is nine o'clock now, a quarter-past nine, half-past nine - all
the same moment to me, for I am at a sentence that will not write.
I know, though I can't hear, what my sister has gone upstairs to
say to my mother:-
'I was in at him at nine, and he said, "In five minutes," so I put
the steak on the brander, but I've been in thrice since then, and
every time he says, "In five minutes," and when I try to take the
table-cover off, he presses his elbows hard on it, and growls.
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