Once he lifted his glance from the fire and saw a picture of Agnes on the mantel; and he got up and took it in his big hands. It had been taken two or three years ago; and it was very beautiful. A gay, happy face; the face of a child without cares. A good face, Amos thought. An honest one.
He compared it in his thoughts with Agnes as she was now; and the trouble in his countenance deepened. After a little, he said to himself as he had said once before: “I wish her mother hadn’t ’ve died.”
He put the picture slowly back on the mantel, and sat down and once more became motionless, staring into the fire. To one watching him it would have seemed in that moment that Amos, too, was very old.
CHAPTER V
A LOST ALLY
CONGRESSMAN Amos Caretall staged, next morning in the Post Office, one of those dramatic incidents which had checkered his career and done a good deal to make him what he was. These scenes were meat and drink to Amos. He liked to hark back to them and chuckle at the memory. In Washington, last winter, for example, he had told over and over the story of his speech at the rally of Winthrop Chase, Senior; his pledge to vote for a Chase, and the sequel to that pledge. The thing appealed to his sense of humor.
This morning he met Wint in the Post Office and snubbed him. And within half an hour all Hardiston knew about it, and was talking about it. The way of the thing was this.
Wint had met Jack Routt on the way uptown; and they came up Broad Street together, and down Main to the Post Office. Wint was thoughtful and a little silent; Routt expansively amiable in the fashion that had become habitual with him since the campaign opened. He asked Wint, jocularly, whether he was downhearted, and Wint said he was not. Routt told him he would be. “You’ll be ready to quit before I’m through with you, old man,” he warned Wint. “You’ll be ready to crawl into your hole. Oh, I’m laying for you.”
“Go ahead,” Wint told him quietly.
“All your ads in the papers won’t do you a bit of good, either. That’s good money wasted. You have to get out and talk to the voters, Wint. Take a tip from me. It’s the word of mouth that does the trick.”
Wint said if this were so Routt would surely come out on top. “You’ve used word of mouth pretty freely,” he remarked.