The correspondents who travelled with Harley were mostly men of experience, readily adaptable, and the addition of a new member to Mr. Grayson's party could not escape their attention. Harley was surprised and shocked to find that all of them were well acquainted with Miss Morgan inside of six hours, and that they seemed to be much better comrades with her than he had been. Hobart, the most frivolous of the lot, and the most careless of speech, returning from the Grayson car, informed him that she was a "great girl, as fine as silk."
"That's a queer expression to apply to a lady," said Harley. "It smacks of the Bowery."
"And what if it does?" replied Hobart, coolly. "I often find the Bowery both terse and truthful. And in this case the expression fits Miss Morgan. She's the real article—no fuss and frills, just a daughter of the West, never pretending that she is what she isn't. I heard her speak of you, Harley, and I don't think she likes you, old man. What have you been doing?"
"I hope I have been behaving as a gentleman should," replied Harley, with some asperity; "and if I have been unlucky enough to incur her dislike, I shall endure it as best I can."
He spoke in an indifferent tone, as if his endurance would not be severely tested.
"But you are missing a good time," said Hobart. "There are not less than a dozen of us at her feet, and the Grayson car is full of jollity. I'm going back."
He returned to the car, and Harley was left alone just then, as he wished to be, and with an effort he dismissed Miss Morgan from his thoughts. Mr. Grayson would speak that night in Chicago, and an audience of twenty thousand people was assured; this fact and the other one, that it would be his initial address, making the event of the first importance.
Harley as a correspondent was able not only to chronicle facts, which is no great feat, but also to tell why, to state the connection between them, and to re-create the atmosphere in which those facts occurred and which made them possible. He was well aware that a fact was dependent for its quality—that is, for its degree of good or evil—upon its surrounding atmosphere, just as a man is influenced by the air that he breathes, and for this reason he wished to send in advance a despatch about Mr. Grayson and his personality as created by his birth and associations.
He rested his pad on the car-seat and began to write, but Miss Morgan intruded herself in the first line. This question of character, created by environment, would apply to her as well as to her uncle; but Harley, angrily refusing to consider it, tore off the sheet of paper and, throwing it on the floor, began again. The second trial was more successful, and he soon became absorbed in the effort to describe Mr. Grayson and his remarkable personality, which might be either deep and complex or of the simplest Western type.
As he wrote Harley became more and more absorbed in his subject, and with the absorption came spontaneity. He did not know how well he was writing, nor what a vivid picture he was presenting to the vast Eastern population to whom Jimmy Grayson was as yet but a name. It was a despatch that became famous, reprinted all over the Union, and quoted as the first description of the candidate as he really was—that is, of the man. And yet Harley, reading it days later, recognized in it something that nobody else saw. It was a blend. In every fourth line Sylvia Morgan again, and despite his efforts, had obtruded herself. He had borrowed something from her to add to Jimmy Grayson, and he felt that he had been seeking excuses for her manner.