WILLIE
THEY say The Pines is a great place to feed. I thought you'd be tickled to death with the assignment!” said Chisholm.
Bentley Ames' glance came back from the dome of the capitol, seen now through the closing mists of a rainy day and the falling twilight, to rest on his chief's face with a lurking suspicion of disfavor.
“I supposed you'd let me cover the convention,” he said. “What's Carveth going down to Little Mountain for?—if he wants the nomination why doesn't he get busy?”
“He's made his canvass. You see, Ames, he runs a factory in one of the western counties,—makes shirts,—the business office gets a thousand a year out of him and the News has got to treat him right.” And the following morning, Ames, the expression of whose face told of the spirit of resignation that possessed him, boarded the train for Little Mountain.
He expected to reach his destination by ten o'clock, but there was a freight wreck on the road. As a result he spent five hours at a sad little way station, and when the line resumed its functions as a common carrier, he took the afternoon train that had just pulled in. He first sought the parlor-car, which he found occupied by three ladies; then in rather low spirits, his mind divided between thoughts of the luncheon he had not had and the dinner he would order at The Pines, he wandered on into the smoker. Near the door were four men playing cards. There next fell under his scrutiny a young fellow of five or six and twenty, who was reading a shabby volume of Emerson. Three seats farther on was the only other passenger in the car, a solidly built man of sixty with a pleasant ruddy face; he was dressed in black broadcloth and wore a high silk hat, and as Ames dropped into the seat opposite him he gave the News man a half smile of friendly recognition. There was something so genial and winning in his very air that Ames smiled in return.
“Sightly, ain't it?” and the silk hat dipped in the direction of the autumn landscape, where the brown fields yielded at intervals to gorgeous reds and russets set in a murky haze. Ames admitted the beauty, and the stranger took the cigar from between his strong even teeth. “Fond of nature?” he inquired.
In a general way Mr. Ames was, but he was not enthusiastic about it; indeed, he was so profoundly sophisticated that sensation of any sort reached him in a very diluted form. The elder man scanned the younger; then he drew from the region of his hip a flat leather pocketbook. It yielded up a square of pasteboard which he passed across the aisle to Ames, who read: “Jeremiah Carveth. Originator Plymouth Rock Dollar Shirt. 'Made on Honor.'.rdquo;