"What are you trying to do, Josephine?"
"Let me go, Fred. I will, I will. How dare they?"
"Pooh, dear! All is fair in politics. It's no worse than the Swamp of Civil Service Reform," I said, as I tore away her vindictive grasp from the window which she had succeeded in opening a foot or two, and shut it hastily.
"How dare they? You had no right to prevent me from hissing, Fred. I should like to fling something at them too. It's an outrage making you look like that, and—and in the soup, too."
Not all the enthusiasm generated by our rival procession, which took place forty-eight hours later, nor indeed the long flattering list of my supporters published by Nick Long in the newspaper for two days prior to election day, sufficed entirely to obliterate from Josephine's soul the bitterness of this insult. As she expressed it, was it not cruel to flaunt such a thing in the faces of children who had been used to think of their father as the most dignified of men, one with whose personality no one would dare to tamper or trifle? It nerved her, however, to more desperate efforts in my behalf. She ventured even on holding up our beloved pastor, the Rev. Bradley Mason, in the street, and capturing his signature to the list of leading citizens who supported me. This ought, she declared, to outweigh sixty soup-tureens.
Before the votes were counted I knew well enough that I had been defeated, but for Josephine's dear sake I allowed her to prepare a victor's banquet, on the assumption that my friends would be pouring in upon me with congratulations. It was she who drove me from my evening paper, to which I was settling down like a philosopher after dinner, to go to my headquarters and ascertain the result. She was sure I was elected. If not (and here her voice melted) the people were not fit to have such a pearl offered to them. I went, and it was half-past ten when I returned. She heard my step, and rushed down to meet me at the front door. I was calm and smiling.
"Defeated by one hundred and fourteen votes, dear. A close fight, wasn't it?"
"Ah, Fred, defeated! You poor, poor boy."
"I can stand it if you can, Josephine," I answered, as with my arm wound around her waist I led her into the dining-room, where the stalled ox and truffled turkey and a glittering array of glass confronted us.
"It was that horrid soup-tureen did it, I am convinced," she murmured, sitting down beside me on the sofa.