Dane after a while. “The last thing on earth I should want would be to run for Parliament. What on earth do you see in it?”
“Oh, I’ll like it well enough if I get in, but I don’t like the bother of getting there.”
“Yes, it pleases your vanity and that of your wife. You fool yourself into thinking you can do more for the district than any other man because your friends have told you so, and your wife is dying to go to Wellington ever winter and cut a dash, and you like the idea of dining with the Governor—all that.” He waved a hand contemptuously.
Roger would have been annoyed at anyone else who put it this way. “You are right,” he said amiably. “Well, I’m not in, and a man who has been in fifteen years will take some beating. But it’s the general swing in the country from Ward to Massey that I’m reckoning on.”
“Yes, the old Liberal Party has had a long innings; eighteen years or so, isn’t it, since Dick Seddon jumped into the lead, and there was someone before him, wasn’t there?”
“I forget just now.”
Dane thought he was the most casual candidate he had ever met.
Night was now settling down on the river and the garden. Lee and his brother San, who was cook, came into the big room beside them, drew back the curtains, and lit two lamps that cast bands of light across the verandah and created mysterious shades beyond the trunks of the trees outside. Then they went into the other room and it came to light also.
“You like some music?” asked Lee from the doorway nearest the sleeping cot.
