"How's trade?"
"Bully," replied Ardmore, reaching for the syrup, "I broke my record yesterday."
The drug man turned to listen to a discussion of the row between Governors Osborne and Dangerfield precipitated by one of the company who had fortified himself with a newspaper, and Ardmore also gave ear.
"Whatever did happen at New Orleans," declared a Maiden Lane jewelry representative, "you can be quite sure that Dangerfield won't get the hot end of the poker. I've seen him, right here at Raleigh, and he has all the marks of a fighting man. He'd strip at two hundred, and he's six in his socks."
"Pshaw! Those big fellows are all meat and no muscle," retorted the drug man. "I doubt if there's any fight in him. Now Osborne's a different product—a tall lean cuss, but active as a cat. A man to be governor of South Carolina has got to have the real stuff in him. If it comes to a show-down you'll see Dangerfield duck and run."
This discussion was continued at length, greatly to Ardmore's delight, for he felt that in this way he was being brought at once into touch with Miss Dangerfield, now domiciled somewhere in this town, and to whom he expected to be properly introduced just as soon as he could devise some means to that end. As he had not read the newspapers he did not know what the row was all about, but he instinctively aligned himself on the Dangerfield side. The Osbornes were, he felt, an inferior race, and he inwardly resented the imputations upon Governor Dangerfield's courage.
"I wonder if the governor's back yet?" asked one man.
"The morning paper says not, but he's expected to-day," replied the man with the newspaper.
"About the first thing he'll have to do will be to face the question of arresting Appleweight. I was in Columbia the other day and everybody was talking of the case. They say"—and the speaker waited for the fullest attention of his hearers—"they say Osborne ain't none too anxious to have Appleweight arrested on his side of the line."