"You please let me speak for myself!" retorted Bruce. "How long are you going to stay here?"
Old Hosie recrossed his long legs and settled back with the air of the rock of ages.
"Why, I was expecting Miss Katherine was going to invite me to stay to supper."
"Well, I guess you won"t. You please remember this is your month to look after Jim. Now you trot along home and see that he don"t fry the steak to a shingle the way you let him do it last night."
"Last night I was reading your editorial on the prospects of the corn crop and I got so worked up as to how it was coming out that I forgot all about that wooden-headed n.i.g.g.e.r. I tell you, Arn, that editorial was one of the most exciting, stirring, nerve-racking, hair-breadth----"
"Come, get along with you!" Bruce interrupted impatiently. "I want to talk some business with Miss West!"
Old Hosie rose.
"You see how he treats me," he said plaintively to Katherine. "I haven"t had one kind word from that young pup since, when he was in high-school, he got so stuck on himself because he imagined every girl in town was in love with him."
Bruce took Old Hosie"s silk hat from the piano and held it out to him.
"You certainly won"t get a kind word from me to-night if that steak is burnt!"
Katherine followed Hosie out upon the porch.
"He"s a great boy," whispered the old man proudly--"if only I can lick his infernal conceit out of him!" He gripped her hand. "Good-by, and luck with you!"
She watched the bent, spare figure down the walk, then went in to Bruce. The editor was standing stiffly in the middle of the parlour.
"I trust that my call is not inopportune?"
"I"m glad to see you, but it does so happen that I promised father to call at five o"clock. And it"s now twenty minutes to."
"Perhaps you will allow me to walk there with you?"
"But wouldn"t that be, ah--a little dangerous?"
"Dangerous?"
"Yes. Perhaps you forget that Westville disapproves of me. It might not be a very politic thing for a candidate for mayor to be seen upon the street with so unpopular a person. It might cost votes, you know."
He flushed.
"If the people in this town don"t like what I do, they can vote for Harrison Blake!" He swung open the door. "If you want to get there on time, we must start at once."
Two minutes later they were out in the street together. People whom they pa.s.sed paused and stared back at them; groups of young men and women, courting collectively on front lawns, ceased their flirtatious chaffing and their bombardments with handfuls of loose gra.s.s, and nudged one another and sat with eyes fixed on the pa.s.sing pair; and many a solid burgher, out on his piazza, waking from his devotional and digestive nap, blinked his eyes unbelievingly at the sight of a candidate for mayor walking along the street with that discredited lady lawyer who had fled the town in chagrin after losing her first case.
At the start Katherine kept the conversation upon Bruce"s candidacy.
He told her that matters were going even better than he had hoped; and informed her, with an air of triumph he did not try to conceal, that Blind Charlie Peck had been giving him an absolutely free rein, and that he was more than ever convinced that he had correctly judged that politician"s motives. Katherine meekly accepted this implicit rebuke of her presumption, and congratulated him upon the vindication of his judgment.
"But I came to you to talk about your affairs, not mine," he said as they turned into Main Street. "I half thought, when you left, that you had gone for good. But your coming back proves you haven"t given up.
May I ask what your plans are, and how they are developing?"
Her eyes dropped to the sidewalk, and she seemed to be embarra.s.sed for words. It was not wholly his fault that he interpreted her as crest-fallen, for Katherine was not lacking in the wiles of Eve.
"Your plans have not been prospering very well, then?" he asked, after a pause.
"Oh, don"t think that; I still have hopes," she answered hurriedly. "I am going to keep right on at the case--keep at it hard."
"Were you successful in what you went to New York for?"
"I can"t tell yet. It"s too early. But I hope something will come of it."
He tried to get a glimpse of her face, but she kept it fixed upon the ground--to hide her discomfiture, he thought.
"Now listen to me," he said kindly, with the kindness of the superior mind. "Here"s what I came to tell you, and I hope you won"t take it amiss. I admire you for the way you took your father"s case when no other lawyer would touch it. You have done your best. But now, I judge, you are at a standstill. At this particular moment it is highly imperative that the case go forward with highest speed. You understand me?"
"I think I do," she said meekly. "You mean that a man could do much better with the case than a woman?"
"Frankly, yes--still meaning no offense to you. You see how much hangs upon your father"s case besides his own honour. There is the election, the whole future of the city. You see we are really facing a crisis. We have got to have quick action. In this crisis, being in the dark as to what you were doing, and feeling a personal responsibility in the matter, I have presumed to hint at the outlines of the case to a lawyer friend of mine in Indianapolis; and I have engaged him, subject to your approval, to take charge of the matter."
"Of course," said Katherine, her eyes still upon the sidewalk, "this man lawyer would expect to be the chief counsel?"
"Being older, and more experienced----"
"And being a man," Katherine softly supplied.
"He of course would expect to have full charge--naturally," Bruce concluded.
"Naturally," echoed Katherine.
"Of course you would agree to that?"
"I was just trying to think what a man would do," she said meditatively, in the same soft tone. "But I suppose a man, after he had taken a case when no one else would take it, when it was hopeless--after he had spent months upon it, made himself unpopular by representing an unpopular cause, and finally worked out a line of defense that, when the evidence is gained, will not only clear his client but astound the city--after he had triumph and reputation almost within his grasp, I suppose a man would be quite willing to step down and out and hand over the glory to a newcomer."
He looked at her sharply. But her face, or what he saw of it, showed no dissembling.
"But you are not stating the matter fairly," he said. "You should consider the fact that you are at the end of your rope!"
"Yes, I suppose I should consider that," she said slowly.
They were pa.s.sing the Court House now. He tried to study her face, but it continued bent upon the sidewalk, as if in thought. They reached the jail, and she mounted the first step.
"Well, what do you say?" he asked.
She slowly raised her eyes and looked down on him guilelessly.
"You"ve been most thoughtful and kind--but if it"s just the same to you, I"d like to keep on with the case a little longer alone."
"What!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. He stared at her. "I don"t know what to make of you!" he cried in exasperation.
"Oh, yes you do," she a.s.sured him sweetly, "for you"ve been trying to make very little of me."