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Updated: May 31, 2025
The public was resentful, the critics were aggrieved. Even Mrs. Mellish had to lay down her arms. "Yes, the portrait of Vard is a failure," she admitted, "and I've never known why. If he'd been an obscure elusive type of villain, one could understand Lillo's missing the mark for once; but with that face from the pit !"
"I'll take the nomination, Thelismer that is, providing you want me to stand as a candidate who will go into office without a single string hitched to him." "I guess the party isn't running into any desperate chances, Vard, with you in the big chair. Sit down now and take it easy. I'll call Luke in.
Everett's got it buttoned. I tell you he has! You're too big a man, to-day, to get before that convention and be thrown down. I've got a better line on the situation than you have. Vard, let's not have this come up between us at our time of life. It's bad it's bad!" "It is bad," returned the General, quietly; "but not for me! And it's too late to stop. I'm going through with it, Thelismer."
He glanced at the General, anxious and keen in his scrutiny. "Vard!" he cried, heartily, noting the resolution in the countenance, the light in the old soldier's eyes, "you're looking better, here, than you sounded over the telephone a few hours ago. You're going to stand of course you're going to stand!"
Under cover of it his grandfather gave him a few words of compassionate counsel. "You'll have to swing in with the new deal, bub. You can't cut party sirloin too close to the horn, and that's what Vard did. He wants to sit on the mountain and slam us flat under a rock with the new ten commandments on it. We can't stand for it. I didn't dream that he had grown to be so impractical in his old age.
Perhaps a good cigar might be a consolation." "So you do get lonesome sometimes, Vard?" inquired the Duke. "It's a lonesome age when you're eighty, comrade. You probably find it so yourself. There are so few of one's old friends that live to be eighty." Then they fell into discourse, eager, wistful reminiscences such as come to the lips of old friends who meet infrequently.
"I'll be pleased to have you go along with Harlan and myself. If you'll excuse me now, I'll finish signing these letters." The old man was not disturbed by this abruptness. He rose. "I reckon you know how to play the game, Vard," he said. "I'm perfectly satisfied, now that I know you are playing it. But you'll excuse me for being a little uneasy about your starting in."
Had the Vards bewitched him? By what masterstroke of suggestion had he been beguiled into drawing the terrible father as a barber's block, the commonplace daughter as this memorable creature? "You don't remember much about her? No, I suppose not. She was a quiet girl and nobody noticed her much, even when " he paused with a smile "you were all asking Vard to dine." I winced.
I felt Lillo at my shoulder again. "You knew her, I suppose?" I had to stop and think. Why, of course I'd known her: a silent handsome girl, showy yet ineffective, whom I had seen without seeing the winter that society had capitulated to Vard. Still looking at the crayon, I tried to trace some connection between the Miss Vard I recalled and the grave young seraph of Lillo's sketch.
It's a queer story, and most people wouldn't see anything in it. My enemies might say it was a roundabout way of explaining a failure; but you know better than that. Mrs. Mellish was right. Between me and Vard there could be no question of failure. The man was made for me I felt that the first time I clapped eyes on him.
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