Well anyhow I says that I am going there and do the best I know how and talk with Mr. Edgerton just the same as all the other times. Because after all the main thing is that he has got this great work to do to tell the Spokesman what to say to the whole American people. He has ast me to advise him and I am not going to let no jealous wife scare me off.
I have not got time to get home to fix myself up after work so I give myself a lick and a promise in the beauty parlors and pile myself into a street car and get pretty much mussed up in the crowd and I ride until I get to Alexander Hamilton Place. But then it is too early and I have read in the etiquette book that it is not good form to arrive for dinners ahead of time so I take a little walk though I don’t mind admitting to my dear old Mom that my knees is kind of weak for walking. But I am not scared in the head and I think up some good conversation and remember some ideas in Pop’s letters and so I go back to the house.
It is one of these gosh-almighty swell apartment-houses made out of pink and green marble and red plush curtains and palm trees and colored boys with brass buttons. But I have got my new clothes and I am not going to worry even if Mrs. Edgerton does know that her husband bought them for me. I am announced by the telephone and I ride up in the elevator and there comes a maid with a white apron and a cap and I am took into a dressing room and then a room with a piano and some books and lights that is dim and mysterious.
Well I have had the hope that I might see Mr. Edgerton first so as to get a line on what is coming but she don’t mean to give me no such advantage she comes sweeping in. “Good evening Miss Riggs,” she says and I remember that the etiquette books says that some ladies shake hands and some do not and she is one of them that does not. She is very polite but a little too gushy and I says to myself right off Mamie Riggs she is worse scared than you are.
Well she starts to tell about the late winter we are having and of course I know as much about the weather as anybody and after we have finished with winter in Washington D. C. I tell her about winter in Camden New Jersey.
Then Mr. Edgerton comes in and he is the same old friend and we do shake hands and like we meant it and then I see that he is going to play the game like there wasn’t nothing wrong. So I says, “Well Mr. Edgerton and how goes the economy program with the Spokesman?”
He says, “Well it is not going so good as it might because you know how it is with economy it is a fine word for the campaign but when you come to put it into practice you find that it means letting somebody out of a job and it always turns out to be the third cousin of some congressman or maybe of a district leader.”
“Yes,” I says, “some of them fellers that is setting with their feet up on their desks smoking long cigars.”
“Exactly,” he says, “and there is nothing that worries the Spokesman so much as thinking about them fellers. You see how it is when it comes to election time they are all busy rustling out the vote for Him and after that He has got to find something for them to do.”
Well I had thought I must be careful not to leave Mrs. Edgerton out of this conversation so I says, “A little while ago, Mrs. Edgerton I thought I understood about this here economy business but now I find it is complicated and there is something that Mr. Edgerton or maybe yourself might explain.”