"What's the matter?" asked the senator shrewdly.
"I do not like the idea of Matthews for commissioner of public works. He's a blackleg,—there's no getting around that. He practically runs that faro-bank above his down-town saloon. Can't you put some one else in his place?"
The senator filliped the ash from the end of his cigar.
"Honestly, my boy, I agree with your objection; but the word is given, and if we turn him down now, your friend Carrington will stand a pretty fair show of being the next mayor."
"You might get a worse one," Williard laughed. "Jack is one of the finest fellows in the world,"—loyally.
"Not a bit of doubt; but politically," said the senator, laughing, "he is a rascal, a man without a particle of character, and all that. But personally speaking, I would that this town had more like him. Win or lose, he will always be welcome in this house. But this Matthews matter; you will have to swallow him or be swallowed."
"He's a rascal."
"Perhaps he is. Once you are elected, however, you can force him out, and be hanged to him. Just now it would be extremely dangerous. My boy, politics has strange bed-fellows, as the saying goes. These men are necessary; to fight them is to cut your own throat. No one knows just how they get their power; but one morning you wake up and find them menacing you, and you have to placate them and toss them sops."
"I might at least have been consulted."