Mr. Gashwiler tried hard to look as if he were trying to recall the meaning of Wiles's words. “Oh!—ah!—umph!—let me see,—oh, yes, the certificates,—certainly! Of course you will make them out in the name of my secretary, Mr. Expectant Dobbs. They will perhaps repay him for the extra clerical labor required in the prosecution of your claim. He is a worthy young man. Although not a public officer, yet he is so near to me that perhaps I am wrong in permitting him to accept a fee for private interests. An American representative cannot be too cautious, Mr. Wiles. Perhaps you had better have also a blank transfer. The stock is, I understand, yet in the future. Mr. Dobbs, though talented and praiseworthy, is poor; he may wish to realize. If some—ahem! some FRIEND—better circumstanced should choose to advance the cash to him and run the risk,—why, it would only be an act of kindness.”
“You are proverbially generous, Mr. Gashwiler,” said Wiles, opening and shutting his left eye like a dark lantern on the benevolent representative.
“Youth, when faithful and painstaking, should be encouraged,” replied Mr. Gashwiler. “I lately had occasion to point this out in a few remarks I had to make before the Sabbath school reunion at Remus. Thank you, I will see that they are—ahem!—conveyed to him. I shall give them to him with my own hand,” he concluded, falling back in his chair, as if the better to contemplate the perspective of his own generosity and condescension. Mr. Wiles took his hat and turned to go. Before he reached the door Mr. Gashwiler returned to the social level with a chuckle:
“You say this woman, this Garcia's niece, is handsome and smart?”
“Yes.”
“I can set another woman on the track that'll euchre her every time!”
Mr. Wiles was too clever to appear to notice the sudden lapse in the Congressman's dignity, and only said, with his right eye:
“Can you?”
“By G-d, I WILL, or I don't know how to represent Remus.”
Mr. Wiles thanked him with his right eye, and looked a dagger with his left. “Good,” he said, and added persuasively: “Does she live here?”