"Indeed I do. We happened to meet, and so we hobnobbed for five minutes on the street corner and drew each other out in the friendliest sort of fashion as to our mutual prospects. He says he has a walk-over, and I told him that he isn't in it."
"I'm glad you showed a little spirit, anyhow."
"What would you have had me do? Make a fell assault upon his hair and eyeballs? As it was, I perpetrated a deliberate falsehood in the good cause. He knows that I know I am beaten from the start."
"Nonsense," said Josephine. "You provoke me, Fred, when you talk in that fashion. What was the use of accepting if you didn't intend to win if you could?"
"So I do intend, but I can't."
"You can't certainly if you hobnob with the rival candidate and call him a good fellow."
"You ought to have been a politician, Josephine."
"No, I'm only crazy to have you win, Fred, and I'm convinced you can win if you only think so yourself and pitch in as if you thought so. I dare say Mr. Spinney may be well enough apart from politics, but it is politics we are interested in at present, and it seems to me it is your duty to hate him—until the election is over, anyway. If you defeat him, you may ask him to dinner, if you like."
Her eyes sparkled like diamonds, and there was a dangerous look in them which would have boded ill for Mr. Spinney or any other Republican had he happened to thrust his head inside our doors just then. As for me, I felt a little sheepish at my lack of courage, I must confess, and I cried with genuine ardor:
"Hurrah for Reform! You're right, my dear," I added, "I must pitch in. I haven't been quite so pusillanimous, however, as it would seem, for I have got Nick Long to superintend my campaign."