"David," there was a perceptible pause—"you—there is one thing you can always count on—isn't there—me?" The voice was very gallant but also slightly palpitating. David almost lost his head but hung on tight and came up right side.
"Some," he answered, which reply, in the light of an extremely modern use of the word combined with the legitimate, was calculated to bring conclusion. Then he hurried another offering on to the wire.
"How long are you going to be at home?" he asked—another dastardly tantalization.
"I—I don't know exactly," she parried quickly. "Why?" and this from Phoebe who had always granted interviews like a queen gives jewels! David somewhere found the courage to lay a firm hand on himself. With just a few more blows the citadel was his! His own heart writhed and the uncertainty made him quake internally.
"I wish I could come over, but there are two committees waiting in the other room for me. Do you—" a clash and buzz hummed over the wire into the receiver. There was a jangle and tangle and a rough man's voice cut in with, "Working on the wires, hang up, please," and David limply hung up the receiver and collapsed in solitude, for his committees had been evoked out of thin air.
His state of mind was positively abject. His years-old tenderness welled up in his heart and flooded to his eyes—the dash and the pluck of her! He reached for his hat, then hesitated; it was election eve and in two hours he was due to address the congregation of griddle-cake discontents on how to make men vote like ladies.
A call boy hurried in by way of a fortunate distraction and handed in a budget of papers. David spread them out before him. They were from Susie Carrie of the strong brush and the Civic Improvement League, containing Sketches and specifications for the drinking fountains already pledged, and a request for an early institution of legislation on the play-ground proposition. Such a small thing as an uncertain election failed to daunt the artistic fervor of Susie Carrie's fertile brain or to deter her from making demands, however premature, on David the sympathetic.
And David Kildare dropped his head on the papers and groaned. The Vision of a life-work rose up and menaced him and the words "sweat of his brow" for the first time took on a concrete meaning. Such a good, old, care-free existence he was losing, and—he seized his hat and fled to the refreshment of bath, food and fresh raiment.
And on his way home he stopped in for a word with the major, whom he found tired and on his way to take as much as he could of his usual nap. He was seated in his chair by the table and Caroline Darrah sat near him, listening eagerly to his story of some of the events in the day's campaign. She rose as David entered and held out her hand to him with a smile.
Every time David had looked at Caroline Darrah for the few days past a sharp pain had cut into his heart and this afternoon she was so radiantly lovely with sympathy and interest that for a moment he stood looking at her with his eyes full of tenderness. Then he managed a bantering smile and backed away a step or two from her, his hands behind him.