He looked to her, and tremulous, vivid, she came, and with her at his side he was himself again. "Marie is to take me for Sonnie-Boy's uncle, and, Greg, we want your blessing."
TIM RILEY'S TOUCH
"A man outside—says his name's Riley," announced the youth who guarded the outer door. "A big husky!" he added when he saw the chairman did not look pleased.
The state chairman nodded round the table. "This is that new man the senator's been talking about." From a neat pile of letters the chairman picked out one.
"Here is what he sent in the other day. From it you can obtain an idea of the calibre of the man. Listen: 'As you ask me what I think about the crowd up here, I'll say that I think they've had their own way so long they've got to where they figure they don't have to make good. They seem to think that to be in politics is to be trying to fool everybody. They would rather—the most of them—get ten votes by faking than a hundred by straightforward work. They don't seem to see that nowadays people know more about the inside of things than they used to—that they're doing more thinking for themselves in political matters.'
"And"—the chairman reinserted the letter in the neat pile—"there's more drool of the same kind. I don't believe he ever wrote that letter. As I understand it, he's a coal-heaving sort who ought to have gone into the prize-ring and not politics; but, whether he wrote it or not, we will have to humor him because of the senator, who is of course the boss"—he shot a glance round the table—"the boss now. We'll give this fellow a little rope. A couple of the boys up where he comes from tipped me off about him—and we'll let the senator see him for what he is. I've seen these wonders before."
"And I guess you don't have to see too much of a man to be able to size him up either!" This from a faithful one on the chairman's right.
The chairman's lips kneaded shut. "Well, in political life—I don't say this in a boasting spirit, you understand, gentlemen—if a man in my position can't size a man up fairly well at a glance he might as well get out. His letter alone would tell me that he knows it all, and the word I get from the county chairman up his way is that he is one of the turbulent, fighting kind. However, we'll have him in here and look him over. Show him in, George."
And Riley stepped into the room. From the moment of his entrance not a soul there had a doubt of the chairman's prejudgment; but, that his less acute associates might judge for themselves, the chairman allowed the man by his own words to portray himself, which, after all, was the most convincing proof of all. It was the senior senator's own way of doing it.