"And how are all our friends at Helena?" inquired the doctor, after he had secured a favorable report of Eva and the baby. "All well, of course, or I should have heard from them!" he went on, with the geniality that Latimer remembered so well. "And little Arthur—he must be quite a lad now——"
"Six—and so proud of his new sister," replied the father, with a note of pride that Danvers marked with thankfulness. The tenderness in the man's eyes told him that this little son was the sole balm of a harrassed life, and he wondered if even this great compensation was adequate for all the man had given—and lost.
"Why didn't you bring the little chap with you?" questioned the doctor.
"I did think of it," confessed Latimer, "but this is a business trip chiefly, if I must own up to it. I want to talk over the situation with someone I know—someone I can trust."
"Anything special?" asked the doctor.
"Politics!" replied the judge. "The political pot is beginning to get a scum on the top, preparatory to boiling."
"How domestic a simile!" jeered the doctor.
Latimer laughed. "We've been without a maid lately, and I've had a chance to see the inside workings of a kitchen. Not that it's Eva's fault," he added hastily. "Maids are hard to get."
"H-m-m," assented the doctor, judicially, and soon the three were deep in Montana politics.
The probable nominees for state officials were gone over, and Danvers remarked: