The editor closed his eyes in triumph. “Read our editorial this week on President Cleveland and the Money Power?” he asked. The Captain nodded. “Mr. Left got it without the scratch of a ’t’ or the dot of an ‘i’ from Samuel J. Tilden.” He opened his eyes to catch the astonishment of the listeners.
“Humph!” snorted the Doctor in his high, thin voice, “Old Tilden seems to have got terribly chummy with Karl Marx in the last two years.”
“Well, I didn’t write it, and Mary says it’s not even like my handwrite. And that reminds me, Doctor, I got to get her prescription filled again. That tonic you give her seems to be kind of wearing off. The baby you know–” he stopped a moment vaguely. “Someway she doesn’t seem strong.”
Only the Doctor caught Grant’s troubled look.
The Doctor snapped his watch, and looked at Brotherton. The Doctor was not the man to loaf long of an autumn evening before any election, and he turned to Amos and 92said: “All right, Amos–we’ll fix up something for Mary a little later. Now, George–get out that Fourth Ward voters’ list and let’s get to work!”
The group turned to the opening door and saw Henry Fenn, resplendent in a high silk hat and a conspicuously Sunday best suit, which advertised his condition, standing in the open door. “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said slowly.
A look of common recognition of Fenn’s case passed around the group in the corner. Fenn saw the look as he came in. He was walking painfully straight. “I may,” he said, lapsing into the poetry that came welling from his memory and marked him for a drunken fool, “I may,” opening his ardent eyes and glancing affectionately about, “have been toying with ‘lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon’ and my feet may be ‘uncertain, coy and hard to please,’” he grinned with wide amiability, “but my head is clear as a bell.” His eyes flashed nervously about the shop, resting upon nothing, seeing everything. He spied Grant, “Hello, Red,” exclaimed Mr. Fenn, “glad to see you back again. ’M back again myself. Ye crags ’n’ peaks ’m with you once again.” As he nourished his silk hat he saw the consternation on Brotherton’s big, moon face. Walking behind the counter he clapped both hands down on Brotherton’s big shoulders. “Georgy, Georgy,” he repeated mournfully:
“Old story, Georgy. Fight–fight, fight, then just a little, just a very little surrender; not going to give in, but just a nip for old sake’s sake. Whoo-oo-oo-oo-p the skyrocket blazes and is gone, and then just another nip to cool the first and then a God damn big drink and–and–”
He laughed foolishly and leaned forward on the counter. As his arm touched the counter it brushed the smilax covered cigar box and sent the box and the cigars to the floor.
“Henry, you fool–you poor fool,” cried Brotherton; but his voice was not angry as he said: “If you must mess up your own affairs for Heaven’s sake have some respect for Tom’s!”