CHAPTER XIX
THE RAMRODDERS RAMPANT
Though Mrs. Luke Presson was not especially interested in the practical side of plain politics, yet it was a part of her social methods to make tame cats of men of State influence as far as she was able. She did this instinctively, rather from the social viewpoint than the political. Luke Presson did not take her into his confidence to the extent that he desired her to cultivate men of power for his own purposes. He only dimly and rather contemptuously recognized that women had any influence in political matters. But it did occur to him, after that State convention, that perhaps he needed his wife to assist him in beginning a reconciliation with General Waymouth.
Mrs. Presson came to him, directly the convention had adjourned. The few men who were lingering in headquarters dodged out, for they perceived that the chairman's wife had something on her mind.
He endured her indignant reproaches for some time. She taxed him with betrayal of her personal interests.
"I've never tried to pry into your schemes. I don't care about them. But when you make a fool of me in regard to the next Governor of this State, you shall answer for it to me!"
"I did no such thing," he protested, wanting to placate her for private reasons of his own.
"I say you did. You're chairman of the State Committee. You knew which man would be nominated—you must have known it all along. You wouldn't be State chairman if you didn't know that!"
The unhappy magnate was ashamed to tell her the bitter truth.
"You allowed me to come here to-day with Mrs. Dave Everett and her daughters. Here is the bouquet I brought to present to her husband!" She shook it under his nose and tossed it into a corner. "You never told me a word about the plan to nominate General Waymouth. It was deliberate deceit on your part—for what reason I cannot understand."