Elms and his lieutenant were hated. The doctor's good memory was defamed.
"It seems to me," remarked Mike Milligan to Joe Smith, over the fence that now parted them, "we had one extreme in town, now we've got the other here, and atween the two, the frying and the fire, we seems pretty like to be cooked."
"At Kokiana," replied Joe Smith, "Sandbach says things goes smooth enough. They've just had another five shillings a share dividend, and half-a-crown carried for'ard in the books."
"Ah, they've got the right thing," replied Mike; "what the doctor intended here, if that scheming lunatic Elms hadn't got hold on him. At Kokiana each helps t'other, and all gets the bringin'-ins of his own labour."
The Bowlings and Frank Brown often dropped in during the long summer evenings, to cheer the desolate party at the White House. Mrs. Courtenay would have left the place for ever, but that her daughters were now more than ever wrapped up in the interests of the suffering people. They tried to comfort them; submitted to many a door being slammed in their face, and many a vicious word uttered as they passed.
"Poor folk!" they said apologetically, "they have been terribly disappointed. Of course we know that dear father never intended this—but how can they know that? All appearances are against him in their eyes."
It was strange to hear Hilda taking the people's part as against Tom Lord's denunciations.
"Did I not always say," he would remark with more feeling than he ordinarily exhibited, "that these folk who raised their 'Hosannas' so high, would cry 'Crucify Him'? 'Not this man, but Barabbas'—the robber. The same old story over again."
