“Yes—Champney!”
“When he turned a vote, it meant he'd persuaded a man, didn't it?”
“Yes—Champney! His best argument was a particular chest tone. If I tell a man, 'Hullo, Jimmy!' and give him a cigar, it's as reasonable as a chest tone.”
“It's not in my line, Wood,” said Hen-nion after a silence. “What makes you so down? You're not old.”
“Going on seventy, Dick.” Wood's mood seemed more than usually frank and talkative. He seemed to be smoothing out the creases in his mind, hunting into corners that he hardly knew himself, showing a certain wistfulness to explain his conception of things, complex and crumpled by the wear and pressures of a long life, possibly taking Hennion to represent some remembrance that he would like to be friends with after long estrangement, and in that way pleading with his own youth to think kindly of him. Or it might have been he was thinking of “Rick” Hennion, who helped him forty years before, and stayed with him longest of worn-out ideals.
There was a rush of feet and clamour of voices in the press-room.
“Wood! Wood!”
“First Ward.”
“Thrown out forty votes.”
“Wouldn't do what you told 'em.”