"Well, something, and at once," he said. "Sam Watts is everywhere, guiding his committees and buying up votes. Morgan and Jack Allingham, too, are getting down to business."
"Then Mr. Allingham is able to be out?" inquired Gertrude, at Bailey's side.
"He is out, able or unable," returned Bailey. "And they are leaving no stone unturned to get votes. I guess you'll have to come and turn a few cobblestones yourself—"
"Yes, Gertrude," said Mrs. Bateman, "you'll have to. I'll go the rounds with you."
"Mrs. Stillman and I will go over to ward seven," said Mrs. Jewett. "Mrs. Mason and Mrs. Turner to ward three, and Mrs. Wentworth and Grace Tolman to ward two. And we'll get out some others. You couldn't go, could you, Miss Snow?"
"I am writing up the woman's part of today's battle," returned Mary Snow. "I shall go to every ward, and will help what I can,—but I cannot neglect my paper. The Atlas is going to give us all the space we can fill tonight."
"The Atlas has been good to us all through," said Gertrude. "We have one paper—and a decent one—we can depend upon."
It was arranged that the women should divide themselves into committees of two at each voting booth, these couples to shift every hour or two, so that Gertrude Van Deusen might be seen at every booth.
"One would think I had been on view long enough so that every man, woman and child should be familiar with my features by this time," she laughed, remembering her constant appearance on the platform during the campaign. "Yet they are saying in some of the lower wards, that the voters have never laid eyes on me. Well, they shall have the chance."
Had it not been that the love of battle and of conquest had been born and bred in the old Senator's daughter, Gertrude would have sickened already of politics and politicians and the mass of feeble humanity that was like clay in the hands of the potter. For in spite of the real interest of the more intelligent citizens, there were the usual hangers-on and heelers,—men who had no civic sense, no idea of public duty, no moral stamina; men who sold their votes openly and as a matter of course.