"Stephen," she demanded with energy, "do you realise what is going on? They are all organising against you."
"What can they do?" he snarled.
"Your own men are frightened," she said. "Two of them came to me to-day—no, I won't tell their names. They begged me to tell you there mustn't be a strike. You'll lose your bill, your mayor will be defeated. Can't you see that?"
"No!" he returned.
"The papers are all calling for Mather as street-railway president," she went on. "The men say they would never strike under him. It's all very well for you to say that the travelling public must take what you give them, but people won't——"
"Lydia," he interrupted, "it's very good of you to be interested in my position, but suppose you give your time to your own. It needs it bad enough."
He touched a sore, for Judge Harmon's old friends, remembering his disappointment in his wife, were dropping her. She was irritated, and snapped in return. "You look very badly," she said critically. "Just for a girl, Stephen?"
He glared at her so furiously, at a loss for speech, that she was frightened and begged his pardon. Yet after she had given him tea she returned again to the charge.
"You said, Stephen, that you control a majority of shareholders' votes. You aren't afraid that some of your men will sell out to the other side? I see the stock is down."