“I want to be in the field,” insisted Breed, 'sipping' his lips importantly. “Those fellows are old fuddy-duddies. I'm a natural politician.”
He was an interesting figure, this Honorable Daniel Breed. He was entitled to the “Honorable.” He had been a state senator from his county. With his slow, side-wheel gait, head too little for his body, nose like a beak, sunken mouth, cavernous eyes, and a light hat perched on the back of his narrow head he suggested a languid, tame, bald-headed eagle. And his voice was a dry, nasal, querulous squawk—a sound more avian than human.
“I tell ye there's yeast a-stirring,” he told the state committee. “There's a fellow come up out of the Eleventh Ward in Marion that's some punkins in organizing. He pretends to be a law student in Arch Converse's law-office. He ain't a native. I don't know where he hails from. He ain't a registered voter as yet. But he's a man who needs to be trailed.”
“Squire Converse isn't in politics, Dan. You're getting notional in your old age,” said the committeeman from Breed's county.
“But good gad! there ain't any statute to keep him out. Something has happened to make him good and mad. Some of these fancy jumping-jacks can make awful leaps when the box is opened, gents! Better take warning from what I tell you!”
The committeemen exchanged smiles.
“We are going to steal a little of the kid-gloved chaps' thunder,” explained the chairman. “They have been howling about machine politics and interlocking interests and air-tight methods until the people are growling about the close corporation they say we've got. So we're going to show 'em a thing or two. Nothing like frankness and open house.”
“Gor-ram it, you ain't even square with me—after I have worked politics with you for twenty-five years!” He marched up to the table and rapped his hard little knuckles on it. “It's this way, gents,” he said, “and I'll be short and sweet. What's the matter with politics when a man like I've always been gets pi-oogled out of the councils?”
“We don't need workers like you any more,” stated the chairman.
“But there's politics to play, just the same.”