“I don’t know enough about business to talk this matter over with you as it should be discussed, Phin-eas,” she said at last. “I only know that some dreadful trouble is killing my poor father. And I also know that your brother is at the bottom of it. I have found out that he wants to have father dismissed from office to-morrow. Father is old and childish, Phineas. In the last few months he has grown much more so. He is breaking down. I can see it, for I have a loving daughter’s eyes. I wish he did not care for the office. It is only a little one, I know. But the Willards have been treasurers of the town for many years, and he seems to have set his heart on holding it. It is a small favour for an old man to ask, Phineas, and you know that there is no honour that father thinks as much of as he does an honour from his own people.”
She looked at him wistfully. Yet he missed the old-time frank and candid friendship in her eyes.
Now it came to him suddenly that the tune on the music box in the other room was, “Where is My Wandering Boy To-night?”
“It is King’s mother,” she said, noting his look at the closed door. “She is very lonely nowadays and spends her afternoons with me. She seems to enjoy listening to the little music box that the Sunday-school gave to me. I hope it doesn’t disturb you. We have grown used to it here in the house. As to the office that father——”
“I am only one of the voters in this town,” he said brusquely. The kindly sympathy had suddenly gone out of his face. A curious feeling of hostility entered his heart. The sudden angry thought came to him in these surroundings, and with that element on the other side of the door, “I’m only Seth Look’s boy, to be pitied, then used, then pitied some more and tossed aside.”
“There is no one who exerts as much influence as you,” she persisted. “But I don’t appeal to you to secure for my father an office to which he is entitled by all fair play.” Her tone was proud now. “I only ask you to restrain that wretched brother of yours, who apparently has come back to this town simply and solely to make trouble. He is meddling in affairs that do not concern him; he is stirring up strife and factions in our town, and for the credit of Palermo and your family it is your duty to put him where he belongs.”
The subdued clicking of a spring ratchet had sounded in the other room, and now the music box started in again on “Where is My Wandering Boy To-night?”
“Where he belongs, eh?” he said in a voice that he tried to make calm. “And where would that be?”
“Well, somewhere so far away that we’d never again hear the bellow of that elephant and the discord of that brass band,” she replied smartly, for the suppressed sneer in his tone touched her.
“So it’s my wild beast brother who is responsible for all the troubles of your father, and you want me to cage him and ship him out of town?”