"Oh, Edith!"
She was at the door in an instant, and, waving his hand grandly at his drawing-board, he turned to her with that expression which connotes the greatest joy gods or mortals can know—the joy of beholding one's own work and finding it good. He had, as she saw, returned to the cartoon of Clayton he had laid aside when the tempter came; and now it was finished. Its simple lines revealed Clayton's character, as the sufficient answer to all the charges the Telegraph might make against him. Edith leaned against the door and looked long and critically.
"It was fine before," she said presently; "it's better now. Before it was a portrait of the man; this shows his soul."
"Well, it's how he looks to me," said Neil, "after a month in which to appreciate him."
"But what," she said, stooping and peering at the edge of the drawing, where, despite much knife-scraping, vague figures appeared, "what's that?"
"Oh, I'm ashamed to tell you," he said. "I'll have to paste over that before it's electrotyped. You see, I had a notion of putting in the gang, and I drew four little figures—Benson, Burns, Salton and Glenn; they were plotting—oh, it was foolish and unworthy. I decided I didn't want anything of hatred in it—just as he wouldn't want anything of hatred in it; so I rubbed them out."
"Well, I'm glad. It is beautiful; it makes up for everything; it's an appreciation—worthy of the man."
When Kittrell entered the office of the Post, the boys greeted him with delight, and his presence made a sensation, for there had been rumors of the break which the absence of a "Kit" cartoon in the Telegraph that morning had confirmed. But, if Hardy was surprised, his surprise was swallowed up in his joy, and Kittrell was grateful to him for the delicacy with which he touched the subject that consumed the newspaper and political world with curiosity.
"I'm glad, Kit," was all that he said. "You know that."
Then he forgot everything in the cartoon, and he showed his instant recognition of its significance by snatching out his watch, pushing a button, and saying to Garland, who came to the door in his shirtsleeves: