"He's a disgusting person," said Barbara, touching her forehead with her handkerchief.
"He's all of that," remarked Griswold, as he retied the red-tape round the packet of papers. "And now, before we leave we may as well face a serious proposition. Your father's absence and this fiction we are maintaining that he is really here can not be maintained forever. I don't want to trouble you, for you, of course, realize all this as keenly as I. But what do you suppose actually happened at New Orleans between your father and the governor of North Carolina?"
She leaned against her father's desk, her hands lightly resting on its flat surface. She was wholly serene now, and she smiled and then laughed.
"It couldn't have been what the governor of North Carolina said to the governor of South Carolina in the old story, for father is strongly opposed to drink of all kinds. And in the story—"
"I've forgotten where that story originated."
"Well, it happened a long time ago, and nobody really knows the origin. But according to tradition, at the crisis of a great row between two governors, the ice was broken by the governor of North Carolina saying to the governor of South Carolina those shocking words about it's being a long time between drinks. What makes the New Orleans incident so remarkable is that father and Governor Dangerfield have always been friends, though I never cared very much for the Dangerfields myself. The only tiffs they have had have been purely for effect. When father said that the people of North Carolina would never amount to anything so long as they fry their meat it was only his joke with Governor Dangerfield—but it did make North Carolina awfully mad. And Jerry—she's the governor's daughter—refused to visit me last winter just on that account. Jerry Dangerfield's a nice little girl, but she has no sense of humor."
CHAPTER VIII THE LABORS OF MR. ARDMORE
While he waited for Miss Jerry Dangerfield to appear Mr. Thomas Ardmore read for the first time the constitution of the United States. He had reached the governor's office early, and, seeking diversion, he had picked up a small volume that bore some outward resemblance to a novel. This proved, however, to be Johnston's American Politics, and he was amazed to find that this diminutive work contained the answers to a great many questions which had often perplexed him, but which he had imagined could not be answered except by statesmen or by men like his friend Griswold, who spent their lives in study.