Part 4 (1/2)

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.”