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"He says he's going to do it, and it's fool business," confided Presson. "You've got to stop him. There's no reason in it." "I've got my reasons. If you don't know enough to see 'em, it isn't my fault," snapped the Duke, passing them and overhearing. "Then I've got this to say." The young man stopped his grandfather as big, as determined, as passionate Thornton against Thornton.
"Will you kindly explain to me by just what right you say this," he sneered "except, possibly, that you're jealous because Miss Presson chose me as her escort." "I have a right as a friend of her mother, if nothing else! I am keeping this thing as still as I can for your sake, for in this case protecting you means protecting her. I don't want to say any more!
Harlan took his grandfather's hand. "That's my boy!" cried the Duke, heartily, and he slipped his arm about his grandson's shoulders and patted him. "It straightens things out a good deal," observed Presson, with the practicality of the politician. "Harlan, you're going to find a winter at the State House worth while.
She did this instinctively, rather from the social viewpoint than the political. Luke Presson did not take her into his confidence to the extent that he desired her to cultivate men of power for his own purposes. He only dimly and rather contemptuously recognized that women had any influence in political matters.
"Grandfather," he said, firmly, "I've listened long enough to that kind of talk from you and Mr. Presson I've listened to all kinds of reasons why a man should come here and sell his soul for the sake of getting ahead in politics." He was thinking of the temptation that had come to him in the form of Madeleine Presson. "I don't want any more of it.
Not that Harlan Thornton admitted that he was weak in the presence of Madeleine Presson. But he felt a sudden hunger for the big hills, the wide woods, the serene silences. He wanted to get his mental footing again. He had been swept off in a flood of new experiences. Just now he found himself in a state of mind that he did not understand.
God knows where I'll be two years from now. You can't reckon on much after eighty. To-day I'm feeling pretty healthy." There was a bite in his tone. "And I'm going to nominate Harlan for the legislature, and then I'm going to elect him. I'm going to see him started right before I die." "And he doesn't want to go, and the voters don't want him to go," lamented Presson.
But I have no literature for distribution to those doubtful voters, I have no speakers assigned by the State Committee to help the men who are trying to get the vote out, I have no fund provided for the usual expenses. Now I will listen to you, Mr. Chairman. Will you tell me what you have done?" "It's an off year, General Waymouth," said Presson.
"It's time some of the voters with honest convictions got a chance to attend a caucus in this district, even if they have to be brought from beds of pain." Thelismer Thornton did not lose his smile. "I'd like to have you meet the Rev. Enoch Dudley, evangelist, Luke. This is Mr. Presson, chairman of the State Committee, elder.
But when the interests of his party were at stake he knew how to compromise, taking what he could get instead of what he had determined to get. After the convention he gave fatherly advice to the committee, and then Presson went up to Burnside village with the olive-branch. But while he extended that in one hand, he held out his little political porringer in the other. He couldn't help doing it.
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