“He isn’t really consistent, is he, Jerome?” Emily said after she had read the editorial aloud to her husband.
“Oh, well,” he laughed, knocking the ashes from the cigarette he was smoking, in a security he could find nowhere else in Grand Prairie, for he did not wish the town to know that he smoked cigarettes, “you know what Emerson says: ‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.’”
“Yes, I remember,” the wife replied. “We used to read Emerson, didn’t we?” Her words breathed regret. “We never read any more. We seem to have no time for anything but newspapers.” And she looked askance at the disordered pile of them on the floor, and out of a sense of guilt reduced them to smaller compass.
“I wonder how Mr. Rankin did it?” she mused a moment after.
“Did what?”
“Why, induced Mr. Pusey to vote for you.”
“Rankin?” said Garwood.
“Why, yes. He did, didn’t he? I thought he did everything for you.”
Garwood sneered.
“Rankin did nothing!” he said, “Rankin’s what the boys in Chicago call a selling plater.”