“Dangerous?”
“Yes. Perhaps you forget that Westville disapproves of me. It might not be a very politic thing for a candidate for mayor to be seen upon the street with so unpopular a person. It might cost votes, you know.”
He flushed.
“If the people in this town don’t like what I do, they can vote for Harrison Blake!” He swung open the door. “If you want to get there on time, we must start at once.”
Two minutes later they were out in the street together. People whom they passed paused and stared back at them; groups of young men and women, courting collectively on front lawns, ceased their flirtatious chaffing and their bombardments with handfuls of loose grass, and nudged one another and sat with eyes fixed on the passing pair; and many a solid burgher, out on his piazza, waking from his devotional and digestive nap, blinked his eyes unbelievingly at the sight of a candidate for mayor walking along the street with that discredited lady lawyer who had fled the town in chagrin after losing her first case.
At the start Katherine kept the conversation upon Bruce’s candidacy. He told her that matters were going even better than he had hoped; and informed her, with an air of triumph he did not try to conceal, that Blind Charlie Peck had been giving him an absolutely free rein, and that he was more than ever convinced that he had correctly judged that politician’s motives. Katherine meekly accepted this implicit rebuke of her presumption, and congratulated him upon the vindication of his judgment.
“But I came to you to talk about your affairs, not mine,” he said as they turned into Main Street. “I half thought, when you left, that you had gone for good. But your coming back proves you haven’t given up. May I ask what your plans are, and how they are developing?”
Her eyes dropped to the sidewalk, and she seemed to be embarrassed for words. It was not wholly his fault that he interpreted her as crest-fallen, for Katherine was not lacking in the wiles of Eve.
“Your plans have not been prospering very well, then?” he asked, after a pause.
“Oh, don’t think that; I still have hopes,” she answered hurriedly. “I am going to keep right on at the case—keep at it hard.”