“I’ll never see you go down this tough street to the depot alone!” averred the priest, reaching for his hat.
Carmen laughed. But she gratefully accepted the proffered escort. Two of Father Magee’s assistants had come in meanwhile, and were caring for the few applicants below.
“You’re right, Miss Carmen,” the priest said, as they started for the train. “Mr. Ames must be reached. Perhaps you can do it. I can’t. But I’ll give you every assistance possible. It eats my heart out to see the suffering of these poor people!”
At eleven o’clock that night Carmen entered the office of the city editor of the Express. “Ned,” she said, “I’ve been with Dante––no, Danny––in Inferno. Now I’m going to Washington. I want expense money––a good lot––so that I can leave to-morrow night.”
Haynerd’s eyes dilated as he stared at the girl. “Washington!” he ejaculated. “Well––! But what did you find down in Avon?”
“I’ll write you a detailed report of my trip to-morrow. I’m going home now,” she replied.
CHAPTER 12
It is sometimes said of the man who toils at forge or loom in this great commonwealth that he is fast forgetting that Washington is something more significant to him than what is embraced in the definition of the gazetteers. Not so, however, of that class of the genus homo individualized in J. Wilton Ames. He leaned not upon such frail dependence as the Congressional Record for tempered reports of what goes on behind closed legislative doors; he went behind those doors himself. He needed not to yield his meekly couched desires to the law-builders whom his ballot helped select; he himself launched those legislators, and gave them their steering charts. But, since the interpretation of laws was to him vastly more important than their framing, he first applied himself to the selection of judges, and especially those of the federal courts. With these safely seated and instructed at home, he gave himself comfortably to the task of holding his legislators in Washington to the course he chose.