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He glared down the long street and grunted, "Grinding their knives, eh?" Evidently the centrifugal motion of the political machine down there was violent enough to throw off one lively spark. A man came up the road at a brisk gait, stamped across the yard, and went direct to the Duke, who waited for him at the far end of the porch. He did not glance at Presson or at Harlan Thornton.
He did not choose gallant words for reply. "He has set you on me, has he, to pull me away from what I think is right? He wants me to be like the rest of 'em, eh? I can be an understudy for Herbert Linton and an errand boy for the State machine! I didn't think, Miss Presson, that you " "You'd better not go any further, Mr. Harlan Thornton.
But Chairman Presson found an inflexible old man who listened to all he said, and at the end declared his platform broadly and without details. Those details of proposed activity he kept to himself. The platform was: That it behooved all men in the State to be prompt and honest in obeying the law. That the man who did not obey the law would find himself in trouble.
And Governor Waymouth had emphasized what that new measure meant by citing the name of Luke Presson. It set the situation before Harlan in a flash. He was summoned to carry out his pledge of loyalty to Governor Waymouth by attacking the pet policy of nullification that kept his own party off the shoals to which extreme radicalism would surely drive it.
He stepped down out of his automobile and walked around the crowd, spatting his gloved hands together, and looking them over critically. So he came to Thelismer Thornton, waiting on the steps, and shook his hand. Mr. Presson was short and fat and rubicund, and, just now, plainly worried. "This was the last place I expected to have to jump into, Thelismer," he complained.
"There's men out there I thought I could reckon on like I'd tie to my own grandson, and they're standing with their mouths open, whooping on that old blatherskite." Chairman Presson went and stood with him at the window, hands in trousers pockets, chinking loose silver and staring gloomily through the dusty panes. "It's hell to pave this State, and no hot pitch ready," he observed.
Is that the kind of a man you hold up as a success, Miss Presson?" His grudge showed in his tone. "You will please understand, sir, that we are not discussing theories just now. This isn't a question of what the world ought to be. It's the plain fact about what a man must be if he's to get results.
It's bad enough, as it is, for him and Miss Presson!" She stared at him, stricken and puzzled. Then she left him. "I don't need any further escort," she informed him, turning after she had gone a few steps. It was Dennis Kavanagh's girl speaking now. "I have been escorted by the Thorntons quite enough during the past ten minutes. I tell you again, I believe you lie.
You look as though you'd been listening to a funeral oration instead of an address that has put the party back on Easy Street." His grandson was careful not to explain the cause of his gloom. He was willing to let politics be answerable. Chairman Presson, more cheerful than he had been for weeks, came and crowded between them in a cosey, confidential manner.
If you haven't got manliness enough yourself to keep away from Miss Presson until this story well, put it mildly, and say until this story is run down then I propose to insist that you do so." "Look here, Linton, I've usually got pretty good control of myself. I'm trying to hold myself in now trying as hard as I can. What you have told me is a lie a damnable lie. See? I say it calmly."
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