Judge Briscoe was sitting out under the afternoon sky with his chair
tilted back and his feet propped against the steps. His coat was off,
and Minnie sat near at hand sewing a button on the garment for him, and
she wore that dreamy glaze that comes over women's eyes when they sew
for other people.
From the interior of the house rose and fell the murmur of a number of
voices engaged in a conversation, which, for a time, seemed to consist
of dejected monosyllables; but presently the judge and Minnie heard
Helen's voice, clear, soft, and trembling a little with excitement. She
talked only two or three minutes, but what she said stirred up a great
commotion. All the voices burst forth at once in ejaculations--almost
shouts; but presently they were again subdued and still, except for
the single soft one, which held forth more quietly, but with a deeper
agitation, than any of the others.
“You needn't try to bamboozle me,” said the judge in a covert tone to
his daughter, and with a glance at the parlor window, whence now issued
the rumble of Warren Smith's basso. “I tell you that girl would follow
John Harkless to Jericho.”
Minnie shook her head mysteriously, and bit a thread with a vague frown.
“Well, why not?” asked the judge crossly.
“Why wouldn't she have him, then?”
“Well, who knows he's asked her yet?”
Minnie screamed derisively at the density of man, “What made him run off
that way, the night he was hurt? Why didn't he come back in the house
with her?”
“Pshaw!”
“Don't you suppose a woman understands?”
“Meaning that you know more about it than I do, I presume,” grunted the
old gentleman.
“Yes, father,” she replied, smiling benignantly upon him.
“Did she tell you?” he asked abruptly.
“No, no. I guess the truth is that women don't know more than men so
much as they see more; they understand more without having to read about
it.”
“That's the way of it, is it?” he laughed. “Well, it don't make any
difference, she'll have him some time.”
“No, father; it's only gratitude.”
“Gratitude!” The judge snorted scornfully. “Girls don't do as much as
she's done for him out of gratitude. _Look_ what she's doing; not only
running the 'Herald' for him, but making it a daily, and a good daily at
that. First time I saw her I knew right away she was the smartest girl
I ever laid eyes on;--I expect she must have got it from her mother.
Gratitude! Pooh! Look how she's studied his interests, and watched like
a cat for chances for him in everything. Didn't she get him into Eph
Watts's company? She talked to Watts and the other fellows, day after
day, and drove around their leased land with 'em, and studied it up, and
got on the inside, and made him buy. Now, if they strike it--and
she's sure they will, and _I_'m sure she knows when to have faith in a
thing--why, they'll sell out to the Standard, and they can all quit work
for the rest of their lives if they want to; and Harkless gets as
much as any without lifting a finger, all because he had a little
money--mighty little, too--laid up in bank and a girl that saw where to
put it. She did that for him, didn't she?”
“Don't you see what fun it's been for her?” returned Minnie. “She's been
having the best time she ever had; I never knew any one half so happy.”
“Yes; she went up and saw him at that party, and she knows he's still
thinking about her. I shouldn't be surprised if he asked her then, and
that's what makes her so gay.”
“Well, she couldn't have said 'yes,' because he went back to his bed the
next day, and he's been there most of the time since.”
“Pshaw! He wasn't over his injuries, and he was weak and got malaria.”
“Well, she couldn't be so happy while he's sick, if she cared very much
about him.”
“He's not very sick. She's happy because she's working for him, and she
knows his illness isn't serious. He'll be a well man when she says the
word. He's love-sick, that's what he is; I never saw a man so taken down
with it in my life.”
“Then it isn't malaria?” Minnie said, with a smile of some superiority.
“You're just like your poor mother,” the old gentleman answered, growing
rather red. “She never could learn to argue. What I say is that Helen
cares about him, whether she says she does or not, whether she acts like
it or not--or whether she thinks she does or not,” he added irascibly.
“Do you know what she's doing for him to-day?”
“Not exactly.”
“Well, when they were talking together at that party, he said something
that made her think he was anxious to get away from Plattville--you're
not to repeat this, child; she told me, relying on my discretion.”
“Well?”
“Do you know why she's got these men to come here to-day to meet
her--Warren Smith and Landis and Homer, and Boswell and young Keating of
Amo, and Tom Martin and those two fellows from Gaines County?”
“Something about politics, isn't it?”
“'Something about politics!'” he echoed. “I should say it is! Wait till
it's done, and this evening I'll tell you--if you can keep a secret.”
Minnie set her work-basket on the steps. “Oh, I guess I can keep a
secret,” she said. “But it won't make any difference.”
“You mean you've said it, and you'll stick to it that it's gratitude
till their wedding day.”
“She knows he gave her father something to do, and helped him in other
ways, when no one else did.”
“I know all about that. She reproaches herself for having neglected
Fisbee while a stranger took care of him, and saved him from
starving--and worse. She's unreasonable about it; she didn't know he
was in want till long after. That's just like Fisbee, to tell her,
afterwards. He didn't tell her how low he got; but he hinted at it
to her, and I guess she understood; I gathered that much from him. Of
course she's grateful, but gratefulness don't account for everything.”
“Yes it does.”
“Well, I never expected to have the last word with a woman.”
“Well, you needn't,” said Minnie.
“I don't. I never do,” he retorted. She did not answer, but hummed a
little tune and looked up at the tree-tops.
Warren Smith appeared in the doorway. “Judge,” he said, “will you step
inside? We need you.”
Briscoe nodded and rose at once. As he reached the door, Minnie said in
a piercing whisper:
“It's hard to be sure about her, but I'm right; it's gratitude.”
“There,” he replied, chuckling, “I thought I shouldn't have the last
word.” Minnie began to sing, and the judge, after standing in the
doorway till he was again summoned from within, slowly retired.
Briscoe had persisted in his own explanation of Helen's gaiety;
nevertheless he did not question his daughter's assumption that the
young lady was enjoying her career in Carlow. She was free as a bird
to go and come, and her duties and pleasures ran together in a happy
excitement. Her hands were full of work, but she sought and increased
new tasks, and performed them also. She came to Carlow as unused to the
soil as was Harkless on his arrival, and her educational equipment for
the work was far less than his; her experience, nothing. But both were
native to the State; and the genius of the American is adaptability,
and both were sprung from pioneers whose means of life depended on that
quality.
There are, here and there, excrescent individuals who, through stock
decadence, or their inability to comprehend republican conditions,
are not assimilated by the body of the country; but many of these are
imports, while some are exports. Our foreign-born agitators now and then
find themselves removed by the police to institutions of routine,
while the romantic innocents who set up crests in the face of an
unimpressionable democracy are apt to be lured by their own curious
ambitions, or those of their women-folk, to spend a great part of their
time in or about the villas of Albion, thus paid for its perfidy; and,
although the anarchists and the bubble-hunters make a noise, it is
enormously out of proportion to their number, which is relatively very
small, and neither the imported nor the exported article can be taken as
characteristic of our country. For the American is one who soon fits any
place, or into any shaped hole in America, where you can set him down.
It may be that without going so far as to suggest the halls of the great
and good and rich, one might mention a number of houses of entertainment
for man and beast in this country, in which Mr. Martin of the Plattville
Dry Goods Emporium would find himself little at ease. But even in the
extreme case, if Mr. Martin were given his choice of being burned to
death, or drowned, or of spending a month at the most stupendously
embellished tavern located in our possessions, and supposing him to
have chosen the third alternate, it is probable that he would have grown
almost accustomed to his surroundings before he died; and if he survived
the month, we may even fancy him really enjoying moments of conversation
with the night-clerks.
As Mr. Parker observed, Miss Sherwood did not do the Grand Duchess,
giving the Carlow tenants a treat. She felt no duchess symptoms within
herself, and though, of course, she had various manners tucked away to
wear as one suits garments to occasions--and it was a Rouen “party-gown”
wherewith she chose to abash poor John Harkless at their meeting--here
in Carlow, she was a woman of affairs, lively, shrewd, engaging,
capable; she was herself (at least she was that side of herself). And
it should be explained that Harkless had based his calumny regarding the
tariff on a paragraph or two that crept inadvertently into an otherwise
statesmanlike article, and that “H. Fisbee” understood the tariff
as well as any woman who ever lived. But the tariff inspired no more
articles from that pen.
Rodney McCune had lifted his head, and those who had followed his
stricken enemy felt that the cause was lost, without the leader. The old
ring that the “Herald” had crushed was a ring once more, and the heelers
had rallied--“the boys were in line again.” The work had been done
quietly, and Halloway was already beaten, and beaten badly. John
Harkless lay sick, and Rodney McCune would sit in Congress, for the
nomination meant election. But one day the Harkless forces, demoralized,
broken, almost hopeless, woke up to find that they had a leader. Many
of them were content with the belief that this was a young lawyer
named Keating, who had risen up in Amo; but Mr. Keating himself had a
different impression.
Helen was a little nervous, and very much excited, over the political
conference at Judge Briscoe's. She planned it with careful diplomacy,
and arranged the details with a fine sense of the dramatic. There was
a suggestion she desired to have made in this meeting, which she
wished should emanate from the Amo and Gaines County people, instead of
proceeding from Carlow--for she thought it better to make the outsiders
believe her idea an inspiration of their own--so she made a little
comedy and provided for Briscoe's entrance at an effective moment. The
judge was a substantial influence, strong in the councils of his party
when he chose to be; and though of late years he had contented himself
with voting at the polls, every one knew what weight he carried when he
saw fit to bestir himself.
When he entered the parlor, he found the politicians in a state of
subdued excitement. Helen sat by the window, blushing, and talking
eagerly to old Fisbee. One of the gentlemen from Gaines County was
walking about the room exclaiming, “A glorious conception! A glorious
conception!” addressing the bric-a-brac, apparently. (He thought the
conception his own.) Mr. Martin was tugging at his beard and whispering
to Landis and Homer, and the two Amo men were consulting in a corner,
but as the judge came in, one of them turned and said loudly, “That's
the man.”
“What man am I, Keating?” asked Briscoe, cheerily.
“We better explain, I guess,” answered the other; and turning to his
compatriot: “You tell him, Boswell.”
“Well--it's this way--” said Boswell, and came at once to an awkward
pause, turning aside sheepishly and unable to proceed.
“So that's the way of it, is it?” said the old gentleman.
Helen laughed cheerfully, and looked about her with a courageous and
encouraging eye. “It is embarrassing,” she said. “Judge Briscoe, we are
contemplating 'a piece of the blackest treachery and chicanery.' We are
going to give Mr. Halloway the--the go-by!” The embarrassment fell away,
and everybody began to talk at once.
“Hold on a minute,” said the judge; “let's get at it straight. What do
you want with me?”
“I'll tell you,” volunteered Keating. “You see, the boys are getting in
line again for this convention. They are the old file that used to rule
the roost before the 'Herald' got too strong for them, and they rely on
Mr. Harkless's being sick to beat Kedge Halloway with that Gaines
County man, McCune. Now, none of us here want Rod McCune I guess. We had
trouble enough once with him and his heelers, and now that Mr. Harkless
is down, they've taken advantage of it to raise a revolution: Rod McCune
for Congress! He's a dirty-hearted swindler--I hope Miss Sherwood will
pardon the strong expression--and everybody thought the 'Herald' had
driven him out of politics, though it never told how it did it; but
he's up on top again. Now, the question is to beat him. We hold the
committees, but the boys have been fighting the committees--call 'em
the 'Harkless Ring,' and never understood that the 'Herald' would have
turned us down in a second if it thought we weren't straight. Well,
we saw a week ago that Kedge Halloway was going to lose to McCune; we
figured it out pretty exactly, and there ain't a ray of hope for Kedge.
We wrote to Mr. Harkless about it, and asked him to come down--if he'd
been on the ground last Monday and had begun to work, I don't say but
what his personal influence might have saved Halloway--but a friend of
his, where he's staying, answered the letter: said Mr. Harkless was
down with a relapse and was very fretful; and he'd taken the liberty of
reading the letter and temporarily suppressing it under doctor's orders;
they were afraid he'd come, sick as he was, from a sense of duty, and
asked us to withdraw the letter, and referred us to Mr. Harkless's
representative on the 'Herald.' So we applied here to Miss Sherwood, and
that's why we had this meeting. Now, Halloway is honest--everybody knows
that--and I don't say but what he's been the best available material Mr.
Harkless had to send to Washington; but he ain't any too bright----”
Mr. Martin interrupted the speaker. “I reckon, maybe, you never heard
that lecture of his on the Past, Present, and Future'?”
“Besides that,” Keating continued, “Halloway has had it long enough,
and he's got enough glory out of it, and, except for getting beat by Rod
McCune, I believe he'd almost as soon give it up. Well, we discussed all
this and that, and couldn't come to any conclusion. We didn't want to
keep on with a losing fight if there was any way to put up a winner,
though of course we all recognized that Mr. Harkless would want us to
support Kedge to the death, and that's what he'd do if he was on the
ground. But Miss Sherwood mentioned that she'd had one note since his
last illness began, and he'd entrusted her and her associates on the
paper with the entire policy, and she would take the responsibility for
anything we determined on. Mr. Smith said the only thing to do was
to give up Halloway and get a man that could beat McCune; Kedge would
recognize it himself, that that was the only thing to do, and he could
retire gracefully. Miss Sherwood said she was still more or less a
stranger, and asked what man we could find who was strong enough to do
it by popularity alone and who was also a man we wanted; somebody that
had worked a good deal, but had never had any office. It was to such a
man she could promise the 'Herald's' support, as for a time the paper
was being operated almost independently, it might be said, of Mr.
Harkless. Well, I expect it came to all of us at the same time, but it
was Mr. Bence here that said it first.”
Mr. Bence was the gentleman who had walked about saying “A glorious
conception,” and he now thrust one hand into his breast and extended the
other in a wide gesture, and looked as impressive as a very young man
with white eyebrows can look.
“The name of Harkless,” he said abruptly, “the name of Harkless will
sweep the convention like the fire of a Western prairie; the name of
Harkless will thunder over their astonished heads and strike a peal
of joy bells in every home in the district; it will re-echo in the
corridors of posterity and teem with prosperity like a mighty river.
The name of Harkless will reverberate in that convention hall, and they
shall sit ashamed.”
“Harkless!” exclaimed the judge. “Why didn't some one think of that long
ago?”
“Then you approve?” asked Keating.
“Yes, I think I do!”
The Amo man shook hands with him. “We'll swim out,” he exclaimed. “It
will be the same everywhere. A lot of the old crowd themselves will be
swept along with us when we make our nomination. People feel that that
Cross-Roads business ought never to have been allowed to happen,
and they'd like to make it up to him some way. There are just two
difficulties, Halloway and Mr. Harkless himself. It's a sure thing that
he wouldn't come out against Kedge and that he'd refuse to let his name
be used against him. Therefore, we've got to keep it quiet from him; the
whole thing has to be worked quietly. The McCune folks were quiet until
they thought they were sure; we've got to be quieter still. Well, we've
made out a plan.”
“And a plan that will operate,” added Mr. Bence. “For the name of
Harkless shall--” Mr. Keating interrupted him energetically:
“We explain it to all the Halloway delegates, you see, and to all the
shaky McCune people, and interview all the undecided ones. The McCune
crowd may see them afterwards, but they can't fix men in this district
against John Harkless. All we've got to do is to pass the word. It's all
kept quiet, you understand. We go into the convention, and the names of
Halloway and McCune are placed before it. Then will come a speech naming
Harkless--and you want to stuff your ears with cotton! On the first
ballot Harkless gets the scattering vote that was going to nominate
McCune if we'd let things run, and Halloway is given every vote he'd
have got if he'd run against McCune alone; it's as a compliment; it will
help him see how things were, afterwards; and on the second ballot his
vote goes to Harkless. There won't be any hitch if we get down to work
right off; it's a mighty short campaign, but we've got big chances. Of
course, it can't be helped that Halloway has to be kept in the dark; he
won't spend any money, anyway.”
“It looks a little underhanded at first glance,” said Warren Smith;
“but, as Miss Sherwood said, you've got to be a little underhanded
sometimes, especially when you're dealing with as scrupulous a man as
John Harkless. But it's a perfectly honest deal, and it will be all
right with him when he finds it's all over and he's nominated.”
“It's a plain case,” added Boswell. “We want him, and we've got to have
him.”
“There's one danger,” Mr. Keating continued. “Kedge Halloway is honest,
but I believe he's selfish enough to disturb his best friend's deathbed
for his own ends, and it's not unlikely that he will get nervous towards
the last and be telegraphing Harkless to have himself carried on a cot
to the convention to save him. That wouldn't do at all, of course,
and Miss Sherwood thinks maybe there'd be less danger if we set the
convention a little ahead of the day appointed. It's dangerous, because
it shortens our time; but we can fix it for three days before the day
we'd settled on, and that will bring it to September 7th. What we want
of you, judge, is to go to the convention as a delegate, and make the
nominating speech for Mr. Harkless. Will you do it?”
“Do it?” cried the old man, and he struck the table a resounding blow
with his big fist. “Do it? I'd walk from here to Rouen and back again to
do it!”
They were all on their feet at this, and they pressed forward to shake
Briscoe's hand, congratulating him and each other as though they were
already victorious. Mr. Martin bent over Helen and asked her if she
minded shaking hands with a man who had voted for Shem at the first
election in the Ark.
“I thought I'd rightly ort to thank you for finishin' off Kedge
Halloway,” he added. “I made up my mind I'd never vote for him again,
the night he killed that intellectual insect of his.”
“Intellectual insect, Mr. Martin?” she asked, puzzled.
He sighed. “The recollection never quits ha'ntin' me. I reckon I haven't
had a restful night since June. Maybe you don't remember his lecture.”
“Oh, but I do,” she laughed; “and I remember the story of the fly,
vividly.”
“I never was jest what you might exactly call gushin' over Kedge,”
Mr. Martin drawled. “He doesn't strike me as havin' many ideas,
precisely--he had kind of a symptom of one once, that he caught from
Harkless, but it didn't take; it sloshed around in his mind and never
really come out on him. I always thought his brain was sort of syrupy.
Harkless thought there was fruit in it, and I reckon there is; but some
way it never seems to jell.”
“Go on,” said Helen gayly. “I want to hear him abused. It helps me to
feel less mean about the way we are treating him.”
“Yes; I'm slickin' over my conscience, too. I feel awnrier about it
because he done me a good turn once, in the Hayes and Wheeler campaign.
I went to a meetin' to hear him speak, and he got sick and couldn't.”
Warren Smith addressed the company. “Well, is this all for the present?”
he asked. “Is everything settled?”
“Wait a minute,” said Keating. “I'd like to hear from the 'Herald' about
its policy, if Miss Sherwood will tell us.”
“Yes, indeed,” she answered. “It will be very simple. Don't you think
there is only one course to pursue? We will advocate no one very
energetically, but we will print as much of the truth about Mr. McCune
as we can, with delicacy and honor, in this case, but, as I understand
it, the work is almost all to be done amongst the delegates. We shall
not mention our plan at all--but--but, when the convention is over, and
he is nominated, we will get out an extra; and I am so confident of your
success that I'll tell you now that the extra will be ready the night
before the convention. We will contrive that Mr. Harkless shall not
receive his copy of the paper containing the notice of the change of
date, and I think the chance of his seeing it in any Rouen paper may be
avoided. That is all, I think.”
“Thank you,” said Keating. “That is certainly the course to follow.”
Every one nodded, or acquiesced in words; and Keating and Bence came
over to Helen and engaged her in conversation. The others began to look
about for their hats, vaguely preparing to leave.
“Wait a minute,” said the judge. “There's no train due just now.” And
Minnie appeared in the doorway with a big pitcher of crab-apple cider,
rich and amber-hued, sparkling, cold, and redolent of the sweet-smelling
orchard where it was born. Behind Miss Briscoe came Mildy Upton with
glasses and a fat, shaking, four-storied jelly-cake on a second
tray. The judge passed his cigars around, and the gentlemen took them
blithely, then hesitatingly held them in their fingers and glanced at
the ladies, uncertain of permission.
“Let me get you some matches,” Helen said, quickly, and found a box on
the table and handed it to Keating. Every one sat beaming, and fragrant
veils of smoke soon draped the room.
“Why do you call her 'Miss Sherwood'?” Boswell whispered in Keating's
ear.
“That's her name.”
“Ain't she the daughter of that old fellow over there by the window?
Ain't her name Fisbee?”
“No; she's his daughter, but her legal name's Sherwood; she's an
adop----”
“Great Scott! I know all about that. I'd like to know if there's a man,
woman, or child in this part of the country that doesn't. I guess it
won't be Fisbee or Sherwood either very long. She can easy get a new
name, _that_ lady! And if she took a fancy to Boswell, why, I'm a
bach----”
“I expect she won't take a fancy to Boswell very early,” said Keating.
“They say it will be Harkless.”
“Go 'way,” returned Mr. Boswell. “What do you want to say that for?
Can't you bear for anybody to be happy a minute or two, now and then?”
Warren Smith approached Helen and inquired if it would be asking too
much if they petitioned her for some music; so she went to the piano,
and sang some darky songs for them, with a quaint suggestion of the
dialect--two or three old-fashioned negro melodies of Foster's, followed
by some rollicking modern imitations with the movement and spirit of
a tinshop falling down a flight of stairs. Her audience listened in
delight from the first; but the latter songs quite overcame them with
pleasure and admiration, and before she finished, every head in the
room was jogging from side to side, and forward and back, in time to the
music, while every foot shuffled the measures on the carpet.
When the gentlemen from out of town discovered that it was time to leave
if they meant to catch their train, Helen called to them to wait, and
they gathered about her.
“Just one second,” she said, and she poured all the glasses full to the
brim; then, standing in the centre of the circle they made around her,
she said:
“Before you go, shan't we pledge each other to our success in this
good, home-grown Indiana cider, that leaves our heads clear and our arms
strong? If you will--then--” She began to blush furiously and her voice
trembled, but she lifted the glass high over her head and cried bravely,
“Here's to 'Our Candidate'!”
The big men, towering over her, threw back their heads and quaffed the
gentle liquor to the last drop. Then they sent up the first shout of the
campaign, and cheered John Harkless till the rafters rang.
“My friends,” said Mr. Keating, as he and Boswell and the men from
Gaines drove away in Judd Bennett's omnibus, “my friends, here is where
I begin the warmest hustling I ever did. I want Harkless, everybody
wants him----”
“It is a glorious idea,” said Mr. Bence. “The name of Harkless----”
Keating drowned the oratory. “But that isn't all. That little girl wants
him to go to Congress, and that settles it. He goes.”
That evening Minnie and her father were strolling up and down the front
walk together, between the flowered borders.
“Do you give up?” asked the judge.
“Give up what? No!” returned his daughter.
“She hasn't told you?”
“Not yet; she and Mr. Fisbee left for the office right after those men
went.”
“Haven't you discovered what the 'something about politics' she's doing
for him is? Did you understand what she meant by 'Our Candidate'?”
“Not exactly.”
“Did you see her blush when she proposed that toast?”
“Yes. So would anybody--with all those men, and their eyes hanging out
on their cheeks!”
“Pooh! She got up the whole show. Do you know why?”
“I only know it's politics.”
“Politics!” He glanced over his shoulder, and then, leaning toward her,
he said, in a low tone: “I'll tell you in confidence, Minnie; she's
sending him to Congress!”
“Ah!” she cried triumphantly. “If she loved him she wouldn't do _that_,
would she?”
“Minnie!” Briscoe turned upon her sternly. “I don't want to hear any
more talk like that. It's the way with some papers to jibe at our great
institutions, and you've been reading them; that's the trouble with you.
The only criticism any one has any business making against Congress is
that it's too good for some of the men we send there. Congress is our
great virtue, understand; the congressmen are our fault.”
“I didn't mean anything like that,” protested the girl. “I haven't been
reading any papers except the 'Herald.' I meant why should she send him
away if she cared about him?”
“She'll go with him.”
“They couldn't both go. What would become of the 'Herald'?”
“They'd fix that easy enough; there are plenty of smart young fellows in
Rouen they could get to run it while they are in Washington.”
“Mr. Harkless is sure to be elected, is he?”
“He is, if he's nominated.”
“Can't he get the nomination?”
“Get it! Nobody ever happened to think of him for it till it came into
_her_ head; and the only thing I look to see standing in the way of it
is Harkless himself; but I expect we can leave it to her to manage, and
I guess she will. She's got more diplomacy than Blaine. Kedge Halloway
is up the spout all right, but they want to keep it quiet; that's why
she had them come here instead of the office.”
“She wouldn't marry him a minute sooner because he went to Congress,”
said Minnie thoughtfully.
“You're giving up,” he exclaimed. “You know I'm right.”
“Wait and see. It might--No, you're wrong as wrong can be! I wish you
weren't. Don't you see? You're blind. She _couldn't_ do all these
things for him if she loved him. That's the very proof itself. I suppose
you--well, you can't understand.”
“I'll tell you one thing,” he returned. “If she doesn't, the rest of it
won't amount to a rip with John Harkless.”
“Yes, it will. Nobody could help liking to find himself as big a man as
he'll be when he comes back here. Besides, don't you see, it's her way
of making it up to him for not liking him as much as he wants. _You_
give up, don't you?”
“No,” he cried, with feeble violence, “I don't. She'll find out some
things about herself when she sees him again.”
Minnie shook her head.
There was a sound of wheels; the buckboard drew up at the gate, and
Helen, returning from her evening's labor, jumped out lightly, and ran
around to pat the horses' heads. “Thank you so much, Mr. Willetts,” she
said to the driver. “I know you will handle the two delegates you are
to look after as well as you do the judge's team; and you ought to, you
know, because the delegates are men. You dears!” She stroked the sleek
necks of the colts and handed them bunches of grass.
Briscoe came out, and let the friendly animals nose his shoulder as he
looked gravely down on the piquant face beside him in the dusk. “Young
lady,” he said, “go East. Wait till we get on to Washington, and sit in
the gallery, and see John Harkless rise up in his place, and hear the
Speaker say: 'The Gentleman from Indiana!' I know the chills would go
up and down my spine, and I guess you'd feel pretty well paid for your
day's work. I guess we all would.”
“Aren't you tired, Helen?” asked Minnie, coming to her in the darkness
and clasping her waist.
“Tired? No; I'm happy. Did you ever see the stars so bright?”