Explore "Mr. Clutterbuck's Election" by Hilaire Belloc on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Next to Mr. Clay's great shed there was an office which during the daytime served for the time checker. It was used that night as the ante-room to the meeting.
Small as it was, some twenty or thirty of the greater people of Mickleton had crowded into it, and more were coming of those who were to occupy the platform upon this decisive night. But though the hour of half-past eight approached, struck, and went past, Mr. Clay was increasingly anxious to observe that no Mr. Clutterbuck was there. With this exception, all the arrangements he was sure had been businesslike, practical, and thorough, but he could not conceal it from himself that no amount of organising power could make up for the absence of the ex-Member, whom the vast crowd had come to hear; and in his heart he laid that absence down to the irresponsibility and wayward temperament of William Bailey; he noticed also the absence of Mr. Fitzgerald.