“Henderson of Greene, eh?”
“Yes.”
Jennings threw back his head and tilted the water, deadly cold from the ice and tasting of smoke, into his throat, and when he had rinsed his mouth, he said, with the happy expression of a man who has resolved a doubt:
“Oah, yes, John Henderson, of Greene. He lived out at Rabb’s Corners. Yes, that’s him; the governor ’p’inted him public administrator of Greene County right after that session.”
The train lurched, and Jennings, bracing himself, wrapped up his bottle and stowed it carefully away in his valise. And swinging the valise in one hand and with the other hitching up his trousers, now beginning to drag at his heels, he stepped away in his stockinged feet to his berth.
Baldwin began to wind his watch, and the Limited, with its three hundred tons, and its tossing heads full of the schemes of politics, went careering away on its paper wheels toward the capital of Illinois.
SENATE BILL 578
HE was a page in the Illinois legislature—“House Page No. 7,” the bright metal badge on the lapel of his little coat said—and all day long he heard nothing but “Here, boy!” from city members, or “Hey, bub!” from country members, or “Hi, there, kid!” from the other pages, or “Get a move on you, Seven!” as the chief page snapped his fingers at him in his lordly way. His real name was James, but he never heard that, now that his father was dead. His mother called him Jamie.
Jamie was kept very busy and yet he enjoyed his legislative duties. He felt that it was a big thing to help, even in his humble little way, to make laws for all the people in the state. It was pretty important, for instance, to carry a paper from some member up to the clerk’s desk, for after the clerk had read it, on three different days, and the house had voted on it and passed it, and after it had been read on three different days and passed by the senate, and after the governor had read it and thought over it as he walked back and forth between the executive mansion and the state house, and had written his name on it, it became a law, and everybody in the state had to obey it or go to jail.
The people were called constituents, they seemed to be divided up among all the members of the legislature; everybody in the state house had his constituents. Jamie felt that, as a legislator, he should have some constituents, but he couldn’t decide who his constituents were, and he didn’t like to ask anybody. But finally he thought of his mother, and when he told her that she was his constituent she took his little face between her two hands and kissed him and pressed her cheek to his. Her cheek was moist with tears.