The new man—an agile, powerful figure—had bowed with a conventional show of pleasure to each in turn as he was introduced; but, that over with, he had faced squarely toward the chairman, waiting. And the chairman began:
"I take it, Mr. Riley, that you are not the kind of man who would stand up on a platform and dodge an argument with the most excitable of opponents?"
"Dodge? What from?"
"Not from the hoots and the jeers, or vegetables—or even the half-bricks—eh?"
Riley waved a contemptuous arm. "I'd rather see half bricks coming my way than be looking down on staring empty benches, or benches emptying swiftly when a man's at the height of his speech." Riley paused by way of emphasis. "It is to try a man's soul—a frosty greeting; but, a warm-blooded opposition—that's only to stir a man up."
The state chairman waited for the new man to leap into the air, knock his heels together and yell:
"Hurroo!" The new man did not do that. He gazed steadily into the face of the chairman. However, every specimen could not be expected to meet every requirement. No doubt of it—here was the made-to-order creature for clever manipulation; and there followed then the suggestion to visit New Ireland, with artful words to whet a fighting man's appetite for that kind of job.
"And now for one last little touch before we send the poor boob to his political extinction," whispered the chairman to his next at hand. Aloud he said:
"Yes, sir—I believe in frankness, Mr. Riley. And I will tell you now that we didn't poll many votes in New Ireland last year. I don't just remember how many—I have mislaid the figures; but I wish to tell you frankly—frankly, I say—that we did not poll many. What they need there, I think, is a determined man like yourself to pile into them hammer and tongs. That would be the way, I think. And you show me, Mr. Riley, a fair Republican increase in New Ireland—fifty out of five hundred, say—and you can lay out your own itinerary for the rest of the campaign. Now isn't that fair?"
"Why, yes; that seems all right." As he said it, however, the new man, his eyes ever on the chairman's, had a feeling that it was not all right. And, as he was one of those intuitive ones with whom to feel was almost to prove, his attitude changed from the subjective to the objective. He had not liked this man a bit from the first, and he was liking him less and less; that finishing "Now isn't that fair?" was surely not meant for his benefit.