Even Mrs. Grundy herself couldn't object to a journalist dining with a
politician!
The stars came out before they had ended dinner. She had made him talk
about himself. It was marvellous what he had accomplished with his
opportunities. Ten hours a day in the mines had earned for him his
living, and the night had given him his leisure. An attic, lighted by a
tallow candle, with a shelf of books that left him hardly enough for
bread, had been his Alma Mater. History was his chief study. There was
hardly an authority Joan could think of with which he was not familiar.
_Julius Caesar_ was his favourite play. He seemed to know it by heart.
At twenty-three he had been elected a delegate, and had entered
Parliament at twenty-eight. It had been a life of hardship, of
privation, of constant strain; but she found herself unable to pity him.
It was a tale of strength, of struggle, of victory, that he told her.
Strength! The shaded lamplight fell upon his fearless kindly face with
its flashing eyes and its humorous mouth. He ought to have been drinking
out of a horn, not a wine glass that his well-shaped hand could have
crushed by a careless pressure.
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