"Now eferyding is recht," added the professor.
"But you have given us the devil's own chase," said the judge.
"It is nearly midnight," said Mr. Amidon. "Have I been out all the afternoon?"
"All the afternoon!" exclaimed Blodgett. "Yes, and all day, and all yesterday, and the day before, and other days! You've been raising merry Ned, Florian, in your Brassfield capacity. Do you want to know what you've done?"
"Do I?" he cried. "Tell me all at once!"
"Well, for one thing," said the old lawyer, "Edgington's long-incubated scheme has hatched, and you've been through a strenuous mayoralty contest with Colonel McCorkle, and have swept the board. Your friends insisted on it, you know, and you couldn't decline."
"Friends!" sneered Amidon. "I tell you, the whole thing is hypocrisy and graft. That villain Brassfield has a scheme for stealing the streets. I told Edgington I wouldn't——"
"Yes," said the judge, "and he took you at your word and trotted McCorkle out, and you trimmed them up. But it's all made up with him, now, and you and he and Alvord are as thick as thieves. You've got a jewel of a campaign manager in that man Alvord——"
"Judge," cried Amidon, "I want you to get up a letter of withdrawal—you have watched the miserable business, and know more of it than I do—one that will make me as little ridiculous as possible, you know. I don't care for the people in general, but there are some whose good opinion I prize——"
"I know, Florian," said the judge. "I know. But you can't expect to cut a very good figure, you know."