Dayson, however, ignored George Cannon's attitude, perhaps did not even perceive what it was.

He gloried in his performance.

Accustomed to dictate extempore speeches on any subject whatever to his shorthand pupils, he was quite at his ease, quite master of his faculties, and self-satisfaction seemed to stand out on his brow like genial sweat while the banal phrases poured glibly from the cavern behind his jagged teeth; and each phrase was a perfect model of provincial journalese.

George Cannon had to sit and listen,--to approve, or at worst to make tentative suggestions.
The first phrase which penetrated through the outer brain of the shorthand writer to the secret fastness where Hilda sat in judgment on the world was this: "The campaign of vulgar vilification inaugurated yesterday by our contemporary _The Staffordshire Signal_ against our esteemed fellow-townsman Mr.Richard Enville..." This phrase came soon after such phrases as "Our first bow to the public"...

"Our solemn and bounden duty to the district which it is our highest ambition to serve..." etc.