Therefore, within a week of his return from Bridlington, the Mayor was met by the request of the City fathers that he should take office for another year. Josiah was flattered by the compliment, but he felt that it was not a matter he could decide offhand. "He must talk to the wife."
At dinner that evening at Strathfieldsaye, when the question was mooted, the hapless Maria was overcome. Only heaven knew, if heaven did know, how she had contrived to fill the part of a Mayoress for so many trying months. She had simply been counting the days when she could retire into that life of privacy, from which by no desire of her own had she emerged. It was too cruel that the present agony should be prolonged for another year, and although her tremulous lips dare not say so her eyes spoke for her.
"What do you say, Mother?" His worship proudly took a helping of potatoes.
"A compliment, you know. Limpenny's next in, but the Council is unanimous in asking me to keep on. I don't know that I want to, it's terrible work, great responsibility and it costs money; but, between you and me, I don't see who is going to do it better. Comes to that, I don't see who is going to do it as well. Limpenny's a gentleman and all that, college bred and so on, but he's not the man somehow. Give Limpenny his due, he knows that. He button-holed me this morning after the meeting of the Council. 'Mr. Mayor,' he said--Limpenny's one o' those precise think-before-you-speak sort o' people--'I do hope you'll continue in office. To my mind you're the right man in the right place.' I thought that very decent of Limpenny. Couldn't have spoken fairer, could he?"
The hapless Maria gave an audible sniff and discontinued the eating of war beef.
"Well, Mother, what do you say? The Council seems to think that I've got the half nelson on this town. So Aylett said. A bit of a wag in his way, is that Aylett. He said I'd got two hundred and eighty-six thousand people feeding from the hand. That's an exaggeration, but I see what he means; and he's a man of considerable municipal experience. Smartest town clerk in England, they tell me. 'It's all very well, Mr. Aylett,' I said, 'but I'll have to talk to the Mayoress. And I'll let you have an answer to-morrow.'"