“Bully old dad!” he said brokenly, and opened his watch-case, where the grim but humor-loving face of old John Burnit looked up at his beloved children.
“And now what are you going to do?” Agnes asked him presently, when they were calmer.
“Fight!” he vehemently declared. “For the governor’s sake as well as my own.”
“I just found another letter for you, sir,” said Johnson, handing in the third of the missives to come in that day’s mail from beyond the Styx. It was inscribed:
To My Son Robert Upon the Occasion of His Declaring Fight Against the Politicians Who Robbed Him
“Nothing but public laziness allows dishonest men to control public affairs. Any time an honest man puts up a sincere fight against a crook there’s a new fat man in striped clothes. If you have a crawful and want to fight against dirty politics in earnest, jump in, and tell all my old friends to put a bet down on you for me. I’d as soon have you spend in that way the money I made as to buy yachts with it; and I can see where the game might be made as interesting as polo. Go in and win, boy.”
“And now what are you going to do?” Agnes asked him, laughing this time.
“Fight!” he declared exultantly. “I’m going to fight entirely outside of my father’s money. I’m going to fight with my own brawn and my own brain and my own resources and my own personal following! Why, Agnes, that is what the governor has been goading me to do. It is what all this is planned for, and the governor, after all, is right!”