“Let him move,” he said, “certainly move. I said I would do it, and of course it will be done.”
Once more I believed.
Rex was kindness itself. He financed me to the extent of several hundred dollars to enable me to move. Moving was a heart-breaking job, and it was many weeks before we were settled, but I bore the trial and worry of it cheerfully, for I was full of hope and faith. I mended furniture, laid carpets, put up curtains, and did all the many things a moving implies, working nightly with a glad heart.
One never carried out his promise to me. In justice to him it must be said that he could not. He had always been unpopular with certain members of the Cabinet, and as time went on his unpopularity steadily increased, mostly through his own fault. The consequence was he was checked or mated in every move he attempted; and my little affair, it need hardly be said, was of no great account to the baited Minister. He found his enemies in the Opposition comparatively harmless, but his enemies in his own party were deadly.
One was a brilliant little man, of wonderful energy and resource, but he carried too much sail for his beam. A remark he once made, about a clever but erratic friend, very well applied to himself. He said: “C’est un fou intelligent.”
CHAPTER XIX
A little while after we had moved and were settled, and I had seen enough of the Civil Service to make me thoughtful and doubtful as to the wisdom of my move, a little lady came in to my office and was presented to me by Pa Steve as Miss Vay. Miss Vay was one of the clerks in our branch, and was noticeable for her diminutive size, and also as being an exception to the majority of women clerks, who were not worth their salt as office assistants, however charming some of them might appear in other capacities. The request she came to make of me was novel and unexpected. “Mr. Wesblock,” she said, “I have been asked to call upon you by the ladies of the Historical Society.”
“I am flattered,” I said; “do the ladies desire me to deliver a lecture, or are you assisting Pa to play some prank upon me?”
“Neither,” she replied; “we are producing an evening of historical tableaux, among which will be pictures of several of the incidents of the life of Christopher Columbus.”
“Quite so,” I said, “and you want me to pull up the curtain, or be an Indian or something.”