"I hate to see that sort of thing brought into the game. But they'll never find anything. The gentleman we are referring to works on noiseless rollers." Colonel Ramsay indicated the closed door by an almost imperceptible gesture of interrogation; and Rose replied by compressing her lips and shaking her head.
"He isn't in on that; he's a gentleman, you know; not a mud-slinger."
"He might have to stand for anything Thatcher springs. Thatcher has developed into a shrewd and hard fighter. The other crowd don't laugh at him any more; it was his work that got our legislative ticket through last fall when Bassett passed the word that we should take a licking just to magnify his importance. Is Thatcher in town now?"
"No; that boy of his with the bad lung had to go off to the Adirondacks, and he went with him."
The inner door opened at this moment, disclosing the Honorable Isaac Pettit, who greeted Ramsay effusively.
"What is immortality, gentlemen!" the Honorable Isaac Pettit inquired, clinging to the Colonel's hand. "We had a little social gathering for our new pastor up at Fraser the other night, and I sprung a new game on the old folks. Offered a prize for anybody who could name all the Vice-Presidents of the United States since Lincoln's administration, and they couldn't even get past Grant—and Schuyler Colfax being right off our own Hoosier pastures! Then we tried for the Democratic candidates for President, beginning back at the war, and they couldn't even start. One young chap piped up and said Jeff Davis—oh, Lord!—which reminds me that the teaching of history in the public schools ain't what it ought to be. They hadn't heard of Hancock, and when somebody said Blaine, the teacher of the infant class in our Sunday School said Blaine who? That reminds me of one time when I met Dan Voorhees, than whom God Almighty never made a nobler soul; I met Dan down here in the lobby of the old Bates House, carrying a 'Harper's Weekly' with one of Tom Nast's cartoons spread wide open. You know Dan had—"
Colonel Ramsay had been edging toward the door of Harwood's private room, and he now broke in upon the editor's reminiscences.
"You tell that story to Miss Farrell, Ike. I'm spouting myself to-night, at a Christian Endeavor rally at Tipton, and want to see Dan a minute."
Miss Farrell was inured to Pettit's anecdotes of Dan Voorhees, and the Fraserville editor continued, unmindful of the closing of the door upon Dan and Ramsay.
Ramsay pushed his fedora to the back of his head and inspected Dan's new furniture.