“Just the same I wish I’d asked Mrs. Hawarden to make him do it. She’s been so nice to me, I’m sure she’d have done me one more favor.”
“Nice to you, is she? Reelly nice?”
“She’s a dear. Just think of a woman in her position hunting me out and making friends with me and asking me all the time to her house and introducing me to people who wouldn’t otherwise have even poked me with a silver handled umbrella! Nice? I should think she was.”
“Yes,” drawled Conover, solemnly, “I guess she must be. Old Reuben Standish is one of the Governors, too. Know him? President of the Aaron Burr Bank. Big society bug, tradin’ on fam’ly that’s dead an’ fortune that’s dribbled through his fingers. Sort of man that’s so stiff he never unbends till he’s broke.”
“I think I’ve met him,” reflected Desirée. “Doesn’t he look just a little like a rail? Gray and long and mossy—with a sort of home-made face? And one eye that toes in just a little?”
“That’s the man,” grinned Caleb in high approval. “There’s two kinds of financiers: the thick-necked, red-faced kind, with chests that have slipped down;—an’ the cold gray kind. Gray hair, gray eyes, gray skin, gray clothes an’ gray mustache. Gray souls, too. That sort never take on weight. An’ there’s just enough humanness in their faces to put you in mind of the North Pole. Thank the Lord, I’m one of the thick, red breed!”
“Do you mean all over or just your head?” queried Desirée innocently, as she glanced at his stiff, carroty hair. “Oh, it’s awfully nice of you to laugh at my poor little jokes. I wonder what you’d do if you ever met a really clever woman?”
“I s’pose I’d begin figurin’ out how stupid she’d frame up alongside of you,” he answered simply. “You see, I—”
“You were talking about Mr. Standish. Is he going to vote for you?”
“As I lent his bank $96,000 last year when it was shaky from a run, I guess he is. Not that he’s over-grateful. But his bank’s in a bad way again and he’s li’ble to need me.”