“Have you ever found me shirking my work or disloyal in any way to your interests, on account of the smallness of my salary? I have handled business and political secrets of yours that would have involved millions in loss to you if I had betrayed you. I have been loyal to those interests. I have done your work satisfactorily. I could have done no more on three times my pay. There let the matter rest, please.”
“Just as you like!” grumbled Conover. “Lord! how the crowd’d stare if it heard Caleb Conover teasing anyone to take more of his money!”
“Money won’t buy everything.”
“No? Well, it gives a pretty big assortment to choose from. And——”
The door was flung unceremoniously open, and Gerald slouched in, his pasty face unwontedly sallow from last night’s potations. For, with a few of the mushroom crop of the jeunesse dorée of Granite, he had prolonged the supper-room revels after the departure of the other guests.
“Hello, Dad!” he observed. “Thought I’d find you alone.”
Caleb, his initial ill-temper softened by his talk with Anice, greeted his favorite child with a friendly nod.
“Sit down,” he said. “I’ll be at leisure in a few moments. And, say, throw that measly blend of burnt paper and Egyptian sweepings out of the window. Why a grown man can’t smoke man’s-sized tobacco is more’n I can see.”
The lad, with sulky obedience, tossed away the cigarette and came back to the table.
“Hear the news?” he asked. “It seems you’ve got a rival for the nomination.”