It passed within a few inches of him and
stopped. He heard the Big Doctor's voice.
"Get into the car out of the rain," it commanded. "D'ye want to be ill
on my hands again? I'll run you down to No. 6. Let Barty 'phone the
news to you. Isn't that what he's for?"
Larry was alone in the dining-room of No. 6 when the telephone
summoned him. He had eaten nothing since breakfast; his hand shook
with cold and excitement, and he could scarcely hold the switch
firmly.
"Burke, 1047; Coppinger, 705;" Barty's voice sounded flat and without
emotion. "Majority against us, 342. Can you hear? Adverse majority,
342! They've beaten us to babby-rags!" The voice ceased.
Larry said: "All right, old chap. Thanks!" and hung up the receiver.
He returned to the dirty, comfortable old sofa by the fire.
Beaten! and Larry was used to victory. In all his twenty-five years of
life, he had never been thwarted. What he wished to do, that he did,
in games, in sport, in art. He might have said, with Beatrice: "There
was a star danced, and under that was I born!"
The first defeat he could remember was the one he had suffered at
Christian's hands, and here he was, turned down again, twice in a
month!
"My luck's out!" he said, staring at the flickering, whispering fire,
and feeling that ebbing of life which will befall, even at five and
twenty, when exhaustion, that has been held at bay by excitement and
hope, comes to its own.
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