Mr. Clacton's attitude was more philosophical and better supported by
statistics. He came into the room after Mrs. Seal's outburst and
pointed out, with historical illustrations, that such reverses had
happened in every political campaign of any importance. If anything,
his spirits were improved by the disaster. The enemy, he said, had
taken the offensive; and it was now up to the Society to outwit the
enemy. He gave Mary to understand that he had taken the measure of
their cunning, and had already bent his mind to the task which, so far
as she could make out, depended solely upon him. It depended, so she
came to think, when invited into his room for a private conference,
upon a systematic revision of the card-index, upon the issue of
certain new lemon-colored leaflets, in which the facts were marshaled
once more in a very striking way, and upon a large scale map of
England dotted with little pins tufted with differently colored plumes
of hair according to their geographical position. Each district, under
the new system, had its flag, its bottle of ink, its sheaf of
documents tabulated and filed for reference in a drawer, so that by
looking under M or S, as the case might be, you had all the facts with
respect to the Suffrage organizations of that county at your fingers'
ends.
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