and you musn't try to leap into politics in this State right
from the pedestal of a demigod. You may be able to elevate yourself
later, but just now, my dear young friend, you should be _reasonable_.
That's a word that means much in handling men and affairs. Now I hope
I've softened you so that you will listen to your good grandfather when
he has advice for you."
She did not allow herself to be too serious. There was the delicious
drawl in her tone that had attracted him at first.
He went to his room and sat down to digest that political philosophy. If
some one beside Madeleine Presson had said it, it would have seemed to
him like the voice of the temptress. But she had already won his
confidence in her sincerity. He wished that he could feel that her
interest in him had more of a personal quality than she had admitted. He
did not like to remember that it was simply affection for his
grandfather that prompted her. He did not understand very well what he
was to do to obey her suggestions. He did not understand himself exactly
at that moment. But along with his loyalty to General Waymouth a new
desire sprang into life within him. He wanted to show Luke Presson's
daughter that Harlan Thornton could play the game of practical politics
as well as Herbert Linton, and in the end would be more deserving of her
respect.
CHAPTER XXIII
A TRUCE
Gen. Varden Waymouth was elected Governor. In spite of the sullen torpor
of his party managers and the snarls of the Reverend Prouty and his
radical ilk, he surmounted by mere momentum of his party a certain bland
and trustful and destructive indifference of the general public, and won
at the polls. The narrow margin by which he won would have scared a
really loyal and conscientious State Committee. But the before-and-after
gloom of Chairman Presson and his intimates was not caused by any
worriment over the size of the plurality. They were languid spectators.
They felt like dispossessed tenants. They took little interest in the
temple of the party faith.
"When they buried old Zenas Bellew up our way (Zenas weighed three
hundred and fifty, and lived in a cottage about the size of a wood-box)
the undertaker found he couldn't get the coffin into the house or get
Zenas out--not through doors or windows. A half-witted fellow we call
'Simpson's Rooster' spoke up, and said they'd better bury the old man in
the house and move the family out into the coffin." That was Thelismer
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