It can be easily settled. It's pure folly on his part. I'll make him understand it when I talk with him this afternoon."

"But I'll feel like a coward," he protested, pa.s.sionately.

She put up her hand and smiled. "You're not a coward, dear! Nor am I a hypocrite. We're just two poor toilers who must do the best we can till the clouds clear away."

She went to him, and when her hands caressed his cheeks he bent down and kissed her.

Then they applied themselves to their tasks in Mr. Britt's bank.

CHAPTER IV

THE ACHE OF RAPPED KNUCKLES

Landlord Files set forth a boiled dinner that day; he skinched on corned beef and made up on cabbage; but he economized on fuel, and the cabbage was underdone.

Mr. Britt, back in his office, allowing his various affairs to be digested--his dinner, his political project, the valentine--his hopes in general--found that soggy cabbage to be a particularly tough proposition. He was not sufficiently imaginative to view his punishment by the intractable cabbage as a premonitory hint that he was destined to suffer as much in his pride as he did in his stomach. His pangs took his mind off the other affairs. He was pallid and his lips were blue when Emissary Orne came waddling into the office.

Mr. Orne, in addition to other characteristics that suggested a fowl, had a sagging dewlap, and the February nip had colored it into resemblance to a rooster's wattles. When he came in Mr. Orne's face was sagging, in general. It was a countenance that was already ridged into an expression of sympathy. When he set eyes on Britt the expression of woe was touched up with alarm. But that the alarm had to do with the personal affairs of Mr. Orne was shown when he inquired apprehensively whether Mr. Britt would settle then and there for the day's work.

The candidate looked up at the office timepiece. "It ain't three o'clock. I don't call it a day."

"You call it a day in banking. I've got the same right to call it a day in politics."

"What infernal notion is afoul of you, Orne, grabbing for my money before you report?"

"I do business with a man according to his own rules--and then he's suited, or ought to be. You collect sharp on the dot after service has been rendered. So do I." Mr. Orne was displaying more acute nervous apprehension. "And the understanding was that you'd leave it to me as your manager, and wouldn't go banging around, yourself."

Britt found the agent's manner puzzling. "I haven't been out of this office, except to go to my dinner. I haven't talked politics with anybody."

"Oh!" remarked Orne, showing relief. "Perhaps, then, it was the way the light fell on your face." He peered closely at his client. Mr. Britt's color was coming back. Orne's cryptic speeches and his haste to collect had warmed the banker's wrath. "It'll be ten dollars, as we agreed."

Britt yanked a big wallet from his breast pocket, plucked out a bill, and shoved it at Orne. The latter set the bill carefully into a big wallet of his own, "sunk" the calfskin, and b.u.t.toned up his buffalo coat.

"It does beat blazes," stated "Sniffer" Orne, "what a messed up state all politics is in since this prim'ry business has put the blinko onto caucuses and conventions. Caucuses was sensible, Mr. Britt. Needn't tell me! Voters liked to have the wear and tear off 'em. Now a voter gets into that booth and has to caucus by himself, and he's either so puffed up by importance that he thinks he's the whole party or else--"

Mr. Britt's patience was ground between the millstones of anger and indigestion. He smacked the flat of his hand on his desk. "When I want a stump speech out of you, Orne, I'll drop you a postcard and give you thirty days' notice so that you can get up a good one. You have made a short day of it, as I said, but you needn't feel called on to fill it up with a lecture." Mr. Britt continued on pompously and revealed that he placed his own favorable construction on the emissary's early return from the field. "You didn't have to go very far, hey, to find out how I stand for that nomination?"

"I went far enough so that you can depend on what I tell you."

"Go ahead and tell, then."

Mr. Orne slowly fished a quill toothpick from the pocket of his overcoat, set the end of the quill in his mouth, and "sipped" the air sibilantly, gazing over Britt's head with professional gravity. "Of course, you're the doctor in this case and are paying the money, and if you don't want any soothing facts, like I was intending to throw in free of charge and for good measure, showing how the best of politicians--"

There were ominous sounds from the direction of Britt. Orne checked his discourse, but he did not look at the candidate. "But no matter," said the agent. "That may be neither here nor there. You're the doctor, I say! When I first came in here I thought you had been disobeying my orders and had dabbled into the thing. Your face looked like you was posted."

"I'm paying for the goods, not for gobbling, you infernal old turkey!

Come out with the facts!"

"Facts is that the whole thing is completely gooly-washed up," stated Mr. Orne, with an oracle's decisiveness.

But that declaration in Mr. Orne's political terminology did not convey much information to the candidate. Britt, thoroughly incensed by what seemed to be evasion, leaped up, twitched the toothpick from Orne's lips, and flung it away. "I've paid for the English language, and I want it straight and in short words, and not trigged by a toothpick."

"All right! You're licked before you start."

It was a bit too straight from the shoulder--that piece of news! Britt blinked as if he had received a blow between the eyes. He sat down and stared at Orne, elbows on the arms of the chair, hands limply hanging from lax wrists.

"It's this way!" Mr. Orne started, briskly, with upraised forefinger; but he shook his head and put down his hand. He turned away. "I forgot.

You ordered plain facts."

"You hold on!" Britt thundered. "How do you dare to tell me that you can go out and in fifteen minutes come back with information of that sort?"

Mr. Orne glanced reproachfully from his detractor to the clock; he had not the same reasons as Mr. Britt had for finding the hours of the day fleeting. "Mr. Britt, a man doesn't need to make a hoss of himself and eat a whole head of cabbage by way of sampling it." Britt winced at the random simile. "It's the same way with me in sampling politics, being an expert. Your case, to start with, had me gy-poogled and--"

"English language, I tell you!" Britt emphasized his stand as a stickler by a tremendous thump of his fist on the desk.

Orne jabbed his finger back and forth from his breast to the direction of Britt, with the motions of the "eeny, meeny" game. "I was mistook.

You was mistook. I figgered on your money. So did you. I figgered you'd go strong in politics like you had in _finance_. So did you." Mr. Orne put his hand up sidewise and sliced the air. "Nothing doing in politics, Mr. Britt! You can cash in on straight capital, but there ain't a cent in the dollar for you when you try to collect in what you 'ain't ever invested. A man don't have to be so blamed popular after he is well settled in politics; but you've got to have some real human-nature a.s.sets to get a start with. You've got to depend on given votes--not the boughten ones."

"Orne, you're rasping me mighty hard."

"You demanded facts--not hair-oil talk."

"Then the facts are--" Britt hesitated.

"Facts is that, by the usual arrangement in the legislative cla.s.s of towns, Egypt had the choice this year. You won't get a vote in Egypt."

"But the men who come in here--" Again Britt halted in a sentence.

"The men who come in here and sit down at that desk and pick up a pen to sign a note have fixed on their grins before they open your door. But the men who get into a voting booth alone with G.o.d and a lead pencil, they'll jab down on to that ballot a cross for t'other candidate that'll look like a dent in a tin dipper. Somebody else might lie to you about the situation, Mr. Britt. I've done consid'able lying in politics, too.

But when I'm hired by a man to deliver goods--and same has been paid for--my word can be depended on."

Britt turned around and looked into the depths of his desk, staring vacantly. His rounded shoulders suggested grief. Orne settled his wallet more firmly, pressing on the outside of the buffalo coat. His face again sagged with sympathy. "Mr. Britt, it's only like what most of us do in this life--take smiles without testing 'em with acid--take words-current for what they seem to be worth, and then we do test 'em out and--"

Britt whirled and broke on this fatuous preachment with an oath. Mr.

Orne thriftily withheld further sympathy; it was plainly wasted.

"Orne, I hope it's about due to revise the New Testament again. I want to send in some footnotes for that page where Judas Iscariot is mentioned. I want a full roster of his descendants to appear; I'll furnish the voting list of this town. Get out of here and pa.s.s that word."

But a yelp from the candidate halted the departing Orne at the door. "Seeing that you have my ten dollars and are full of political information, perhaps you'll throw in free of charge who it is this town is going to send to the legislature!"

"Only one thing has been decided on so far," returned the politician.

"And, having no desire to rub it in, I'll let you draw your own conclusions." Mr. Orne had the door open; he dodged out and slammed the door shut.

It was promptly opened--so promptly that Mr. Britt was fairly caught at what he was about. He was standing up, shaking both fists at the door and cursing roundly. Vona was gazing at him in alarm.

"I was waiting in the corridor, sir, till you--till your business--till Mr. Orne went away," she stammered.