Now, in common with all true Senatorial bosses, Standiford had seen to it that his junior Senator was a man of straw, put in the place in order that the boss might have two votes in the Senate. Never had the junior Senator yet voted or acted in opposition to his master; but had Thorndyke been the junior it would have been another story, and both men knew it. This caused Thorndyke to remark, coolly:
“He would have no reason to disturb himself—the ass! You have been kind enough to give me to understand that I am ineligible for promotion, not being made of putty, as our junior Senator is.”
“Now, now!” remonstrated Senator Standiford, again assuming his air of a seventeenth-century Puritan. “To hear you anybody would think that our State organisation didn’t want every first-class man it can get! We have the highest regard for your services, and we do what we can to keep you in your present place because we see your usefulness there.”
Senator Standiford punctiliously used the euphemism “we” just as he gravely consulted all the pothouse politicians and heelers in “the organisation,” but it did not materially affect the fact that he was the whole proposition in his own State.
Thorndyke looked full into the deep, calm eyes of the rugged old man before him, and could not forbear laughing; but there was not the glimmer of a twinkle in them. Presently the old man said, coolly:
“Suppose I should tell you that I may retire at the end of my term, two years from now?”
“I should wish to believe anything you say, my dear Senator, but I am afraid I couldn’t believe that.”
“What a fellow you are! But let me tell you—mind, this is a confidence between gentlemen—my retirement is not impossible. You know my daughter, my little Letty——”
As Senator Standiford spoke the name his face softened, and a passion of parental love shone in his deep-set eyes.
“She is a very remarkable girl, Mr. Thorndyke, very remarkable; and she loves her old father better than he deserves. I have as good sons as any man ever had—but that daughter left me by my dead wife is worth to me everything else on God’s earth. The doctors have been frightening her about me lately. They tell her I work too hard for my time of life—that I ought to take a rest, and if I will do it I can add ten years to my life. Now, you know, the State organisation will never let me take a rest”—Senator Standiford said this quite seriously—“and Letty as good as told me six months ago that if I should be re-elected to the Senate”—the Senator uttered this “if” in a tone of the most modest deprecation—“if I should be re-elected for another term—as she wishes me to be—then she wants me to resign. I don’t mind admitting that if any other human being had said this to me except my daughter Letty, I should have reckoned myself drunk or crazy to have listened to it. But my daughter, as I mentioned to you, is a remarkable girl. Besides, the child is not strong herself, and if she gets to worrying about me—well, you can see, Mr. Thorndyke, how it is with me. The world credits me with loving place and power above everything on earth, but there is something dearer to me than the office of President of the United States: it is my daughter. And the sweetness and the tenderness of that child for her old father——”