Eliph' stroked his whiskers softly and coughed gently behind his hand.
“Briggs, did you say the name was?” he asked. “Seems to me I met a lady at a picnic up Clarence way that had that name. You said the name was Sally Briggs?”
“That's her,” said Wilkins. “Sally Ann Briggs. She's been visitin' up there in Clarence.”
Eliph' nodded his head slowly.
“I seem to recollect her, since you mention it,” he said indifferently, and then he added, “She spoke as if she might buy a copy of Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art when I saw her at that picnic. I guess I'll drop 'round and see if she's ready to buy. If she' goin' to be married she ought to have a copy.”
CHAPTER VIII. The Medium-Sized Box
As Eliph' walked briskly toward Miss Sally's house the Colonel was having an interesting conversation with Attorney Toole, in the attorney's office over the Kilo Savings Bank.
Attorney Toole had been a lawyer at Franklin, and he had come down to Kilo because he preferred a being a big toad in a small puddle, rather than a little toad in a middle-sized one. This was one of his reasons, but another was that he had complete and full faith in Richard Toole, and intended to be a political power in the land. He could not be much of anything in Franklin, for that town was hard and fast Democratic, and Toole was a Republican. The first step to political preferment is to be elected to something or other, it does not make much difference what, and to rise from that to greater things, but a Republican had no chance in Franklin; couldn't even get an appointment as dog police or wharfmaster; couldn't get elected to any office at all.
So Toole packed up his law books and moved to Kilo, where he was in a Republican town, a Republican county, and a Republican congressional district, in a Republican State that formed part of a Republican nation. He selected Kilo, after considering other good little Republican towns, because the Republicans of Kilo needed aid and assistance; they were out of office; kicked out.