“No, I’m making a campaign through the district.”
“Oh—yes. You were nominated by the Democrats for—for——”
Mr. Hollister hesitated awkwardly. “For Circuit Judge,” Helm supplied.
“Against my cousin, Judge Powers. These ladies are my sister Clara and Miss Clearwater.”
Helm bowed to the ladies, who smiled graciously at him. He could see their faces now—lovely, delicate faces with the look of the upper class—the sort of women he had seen only at a distance and had met only in novels and memoirs.
“The chauffeur was sick and I was ass enough to risk coming without him,” said Hollister. “Nell, you’ll have to tell us what to do.”
There followed about the most interesting and exciting hour of George Helm’s life up to that time. Within five minutes Barton Hollister had shown that he was worse than useless for the work in hand, had been swept aside by Helm and Miss Clearwater. He smoked and fussed about and quarreled with his sister, who was in no very good humor with him—“casting us away in the wilderness at three o’clock in the morning.” Helm and the girl who knew toiled at removing the tire and replacing it. She did not know very much; so in the end Helm became boss and, with her assistance, worked out the problem from its foundations.
It isn’t easy for an intelligent human being to say so much as three sentences without betraying his intelligence. And in an emergency the evidences of superior mind stand out clearly and brilliantly. Thus it came to pass that in the hour’s work George Helm and Eleanor Clearwater got a respect each for the other’s intelligence. His respect for her was so great that he all but forgot her loveliness and her remote removal from the sphere of his humble, toilsome life. He was tempted to prolong the task, in spite of the irritation of Clara Hollister’s railing, peevish voice. But he resisted the temptation and got his visitors into condition for departure with all the speed he could command.
They thanked him effusively. There was handshaking all round. Hollister and his sister urged him to call “soon”—a diplomatic invitation; it sounded cordial, yet—was safely vague. The automobile departed, and the candidate for judge was free to resume his repose in the airy chamber he had selected, to save time and hotel bills.
Two hours later he made a thorough toilet with the assistance of a convenient spring, hitched up his horse and drove out of the woods and into the by-road to search for a farm-house and breakfast. After about a mile, and just before he reached the main road, he saw ahead of him an auto—the auto. In his shyness he reined in his horse and looked round for some way to escape. He, the homely, the obscure, the wretchedly poor, the badly dressed, the grotesque straggler for a foothold in life—“as ridiculous as a turtle on its back and trying to get right side up”—what had he to do with those rich, grand, elegant people? When they saw him in the full light of day, needing a shave and none too tidy after his interrupted night out, they would humiliate him with their polite but not to be concealed disdain of him. Bart Hollister suddenly sprang from the auto and shouted and waved. There was nothing to do but go on.