"Excuse me a moment," said Bergen, returning to business.
Cargill took an easy position. "I don't know why I have sized you up as literary in general effect, but I have. That's one reason why I took to you. It's so damned unusual to find a politician that has a single idea above votes. And then I'm literary myself," he said, his face a mask of impenetrable gravity. "I wrote up the sheep industry of Iowa for the Agricultural Encyclopædia. That puts me in the front rank of Des Moines literary aspirants.
"Towns like this," he said, going off on a speculative side track, "have a two-per-cent. population who are inordinately literary. They recognize my genius. The other ninety-eight per cent. don't care a continental damn for Shakespeare or anybody else, barring Mary Jane Holmes, of course, and the five-cent story papers. But literary Des Moines is literary. They stand by Shakespeare and Homer, I can tell you, and they recognize genius when they see it. By the way, Bergen," he said, calling his brother-in-law to him again, "we must make this young man acquainted with our one literary girl."
"Wheat is ninety-four bid. New York strong." It was impossible to hold Bergen's attention, however, with a sharp bulge on the market, and Cargill was forced to turn to Bradley again.
"There is a girl in this town who has the literary quality. True, she has recognized my ability, which prejudices me in her favor, of course. In turn I presented her with my report on the sheep industry."
Bradley laughed, but Cargill proceeded as if there were nothing funny in the situation—
"And she read it, actually, and quoted it in one of her great speeches. It made the reporter bug out his eyes. He said he had observed of late quite a vein of poetry running through Miss Wilbur's speeches, which lifted them out of the common rut."
Bradley lost sight of the humor in this speech at the sound of Ida's name, and his face flushed. He had not heard her name spoken by a third person in months, and had never dared to say it out loud himself.
Cargill went on: "She's an infernal heretic and suffragist and all that, but she's a power. Her name is Wilbur—Ida Wilbur. Used to lecture for the Grange or something of that kind. Is still lecturing, I believe, but the Grange has snuffed out."
Six or eight men came into the larger room talking loudly and excitedly about the market, and Cargill's attention was drawn off by the resonant reports of the Chicago market.