"I told him," returned Baxter, "but, somehow, it didn't look as if he were impressed. He was so positive that he would not even let me put in a word more on the subject. 'Are you dead sure, Smith?' I said, and he answered, 'I'm as dead sure as you are yourself, Baxter.'"
The Major crossed his knees angrily, stretched himself back in his chair, and began pulling nervously at the ends of his moustache.
"Well, I'll have to see him myself," he said authoritatively.
"You may see him as much as you please," replied Baxter, with a soft, offended dignity, "but I'll be mightily surprised, sir, if you get him to change his mind."
"Well, I reckon you're right, Bob," admitted the other, after a moment's reflection, "what he won't do for you, it isn't likely that he'll do for the rest of Tappahannock—but the fact remains that somebody has got to step up and defeat Jasper Trend. Now I ask you pointblank—where'll you get your man?"
"The Lord knows!" sighed Baxter, and he sucked hard at the stem of his pipe.
"Then I tell you if you can't make Smith come out, it's your duty as an honest citizen to run yourself."
Baxter relapsed into a depressed silence, in the midst of which his thoughts were invaded not so much by the political necessity of the occasion as by the small, but dominant figure of his wife. The big man, who had feared neither shot nor bayonet, trembled in spirit as he imagined the outraged authority that could express itself in a person that measured hardly a fraction more than five feet from her shoes to the curling gray fringe above her forehead. He remembered that once in the early days of his marriage, he had allowed himself to be seduced by the promise of political honours, and that for a whole miserable month he had gone without griddle cakes and syrup for his breakfast. "No—no, I could never tell Marthy," he thought, desperately, still seeing in imagination the pretty, indignant face of Mrs. Baxter.
"It's your duty as an honest citizen to run yourself," repeated the Major, rapping the arm of his chair to enforce his words.
"I can't," rejoined Baxter, hopelessly, "I can't sir," and he added an instant afterward, "you see women have got the idea somehow, that politics ain't exactly moral."