“Can’t you possibly get along somehow?” she asked. “Tell ’em you just ain’t got any money to give ’em.”
Garwood gave a contemptuous “Humph!” and then, made impatient by her utter failure to comprehend the grim necessity of a candidate’s position with election but a week away, he said:
“Didn’t I just say I’d got to have some?”
“Well, mother don’t pretend to know about politics. Your pa never had anything to do with ’em, you know.” She hastened to say this in her mild voice, to conciliate his petulance with her.
“Oh, I know, mother,” he rejoined; “but it’s a ground-hog case with me. I’ve got to meet my assessments some way. It wouldn’t be honourable not to.”
He stretched out his long legs and gazed into the grate.
“I’ll have to borrow of some one, I don’t know who.”
He slid farther down into his chair and crowded his hands into his trousers’ pockets, a physical posture at one with his mental attitude.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
He was scowling, his face was long, and he said this with the deep tone of a final and absolute despair.