At last she looked about, signalled for the car to stop, and alighted. I followed, rather suspecting that she did not know her way. She walked steadily on, however, to a big, dark house with a vine-covered porch, close to the sidewalk. A stout man, coatless, and in a white shirt, stood at the gate. He wore a slouch hat, and I knew him, even in that dim light, for a farmer. She stopped for a moment, and without a word, sprang into his arms.
“Wal, little gal, ain’t yeh out purty late?” I heard him say, as I walked past. “Didn’t expect yer dad to see yeh, did yeh? Why, yeh ain’t a-cryin’, be yeh?”
“O pa! O pa!” was all I heard her say; but it was enough. I walked to the corner, and sat down on the curbstone, dead tired, but happy. In a little while I went back toward the street-car line, and as I passed the vine-clad porch, heard the farmer’s bass voice, and stopped to listen, frankly an eavesdropper, and feeling, somehow, that I had earned the right to hear.
“Why, o’ course, I’ll take yeh away, ef yeh don’t like it here, little gal,” he was saying. “Yes, we’ll go right in an’ pack up now, if yeh say so. Only it’s a little suddent, and may hurt the Madame’s feelin’s, y’ know—”
At the hotel I was forced by the crowded state of the city to share the bed of one of my fellow delegates. He was a judge from down the state, and awoke as I lay down.
“That you, Barslow?” said he. “Do you know a fellow by the name of Elkins, of Cleveland?”
“He was here to see you, or rather to inquire if you were Al Barslow who used to live in Pleasant Valley Township,” the Judge went on. “He’s the fellow who organized the Ohio flambeau brigade. Seems smart.”
“Pleasant Valley Township, did he say? Yes, I know him. It’s Jimmie Elkins.”