At Judge Rutherford’s suggestion, Tom had long sought an interview with a certain member of the Senate whose good word would be a carrying weight in any question under debate. He was a shrewd, honest, business-like man, and a personal friend of the President’s. He was much pursued by honest and dishonest alike, and, as a result of experience, had become difficult to reach. On the day Tom was admitted to see him, he had been more than usually badgered. Just as Tom approached his door a little man opened it cautiously and slid out, with the air of one leaving within the apartment things not exhilarating on retrospect. He was an undersized country man, the cut of whose jeans wore a familiar air to Tom’s eye even at a distance and before he lifted the countenance which revealed him as Mr. Stamps.
“We ain’t a-gwine to do your job no good to-day, Tom,” he said, benignly. “He’d ‘a’ kicked me out ef I hadn’t ‘a’ bin small—jest same es you was gwine ter that time I come to talk to ye about Sheby. He’s a smarter man than you be, an’ he seed the argyment I hed to p’int out to you. Ye won’t help your job none to-day!”
“I haven’t got a ‘job’ in hand,” Tom answered; “your herds of stock and the Judge’s coal mines and cotton fields are different matters.”
He passed on and saw that when his name was announced the Senator looked up from his work with a fretted movement of the head.
“Mr. De Willoughby of Talbot’s Cross-roads?” he said. Tom bowed. He became conscious of appearing to occupy too much space in the room of a busy man who had plainly been irritated.
“I was told by Judge Rutherford that you had kindly consented to see me,” he said.
The Senator tapped the table nervously with his pencil and pushed some papers aside.
“Well, I find I have no time to spare this morning,” was his brutally frank response. “I have just been forced to give the time which might have been yours to a little hoosier who made his way in, heaven knows how, and refused to be ordered out. He had a claim, too, and came from your county and said he was an old friend of yours.”
“He is not an old enemy,” answered Tom. “There is that much foundation in the statement.”
“Well, he has occupied the time I had meant to give you,” said the Senator, “and I was not prepossessed either by himself or his claim.”