The Henchman | Page 7

practise law. I did. It goes with the office. Remunerative as ever?"
"Talk about 'benefit of clergy,'" exploded the younger man; "that mediaeval bonanza isn't to be mentioned in the same week with the ministerial half-rates, donations, and hold-ups we moderns put up with. This pulpit pounder's shrew pays me no more than she pays the doctor, the grocer, the butcher, and the rest. What a ukase I could issue if I were Czar of these United States."
"Cousin Phoebe's 'sofy,' beloved Nephew Jason's unsalable dishes, and Brother Henry's pickle-caster still extant?"
"Yes, yes," groaned Shelby.
"And little Ann Eliza's sheets and pillow-slips, I dare say. It's astonishing how they endure."
"It's astonishing how I endure."
"You must--at any rate, till the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Did the pious gossip tell you any pleasant personal news?"
"She has heard talk that the Micks are sore and that Doc Crandall has had an attack of virtue."
"You needn't lose sleep over the handful of Irish in our camp; they know who butters their parsnips. And I'll take care of the doctor. He's an innocuous mugwump. She didn't mention Volney Sprague?"
"Sprague," said Shelby, wearily; "what is that man up to now?"
Bowers rose, paced the room, and returned, big with news.
"The Whig has bolted," he announced.
CHAPTER IV
Shelby's amaze spent its force in an oath. In a moment he asked, calmly:--
"What does he say?"
"Not much; mainly that the manner of your nomination debars his printing your name at the head of his editorial page."
"Endorses the rest of our party ticket, doesn't he?"
"Yes; it's a personal bolt."
Shelby ruminated earnestly.
"It's only a one-horse country daily," he declared finally. "The Whig! You'd think Henry Clay still above ground."
"Strikes you that way, does it?" Bowers emitted with a cloud of smoke.
"Why, yes. You don't consider such a paper dangerous?"
"All newspapers are dangerous in politics; there's none too mean to have its following. The Whig has influence."
"It's a one-horse paper," reiterated Shelby.
"M-yes; it is a slow coach," Bowers admitted; "but it suits a lot of people. They respect it because it keeps the old name and jogs along in the old gait it had under Volney's father before him. It's been a stanch party paper, too, and that without soliciting a dollar's worth of public advertising or political pap of any description. The Whig doesn't often kick over the traces. The Greeley campaign was its last bolt."
"Well, the milk's spilt," said Shelby, with strenuous cheerfulness; "we've one reason the more to make next week's ratification meeting a rousing success. What did you think of our little welcome at the club last night?"
Bowers grinned.
"Mrs. Hilliard managed it first-class," he said; "but I felt cheap when we came in."
"So did I. The scheme seemed a good one when she suggested it, but when it came right down to pulling it off I would have sold out for thirty cents on the dollar. It takes lovely woman to do those things. She has her uses in politics, eh?"
"M-yes," Bowers answered in half assent; "but she's an uncertain quantity. Like grandsire's musket, she's as likely to kill behind as before."
The vine-screened window in which they now talked overlooked the neighboring Temple house, a dignified sentry at the point where the leisured street forsook the chaffer of the town to climb amidst arching elms and maples, above whose gaudy autumn masses rose the dome of the courthouse and the spires of many churches. It was an old-fashioned Georgian structure with white columns clear-cut against its weathered brick; at either side of the low steps a great hydrangea, its glory waning with the summer, lifted its showy clusters from an urn; while walk and carriage drive alike sauntered to the street through hedgerows of box. The mouth of the driveway at this moment gleamed white from the kerchiefs of a knot of Polish children estray from the quarry district, who, at a laughing nod from Ruth, swooped, a chattering barbaric horde, on the fallen apples dotting a bit of sward with yellow and red. Shelby smilingly watched the scramble to its speedy end, and turned to the giver of the feast, who sat in a sheltered corner of her veranda with a caller. The latter proved to be Bernard Graves, sunning himself with a cat's content.
"Industrious young man," Shelby observed with the irony of whole-souled dislike. "Inherits a comfortable property, goes to an expensive college, dawdles through Europe, and then comes home to play carpet knight and read poetry to girls. Why doesn't he go to work?"
Bowers made no reply to the gibe. He was watching Ruth. Presently in his slow way he checked off her qualifications:--
"Handsome girl, good education, kind disposition, rich, no airs, and no incumbrances, barring her companion, the old maid cousin, who could be pensioned. Ross, she'd do you more good than a brace of married