ried Genevieve. "There were eight dozen of those
roses from the Young Men's Republican Club, and to think---Oh, to
think----"

"Well, now, George," cried Mr. Penfield Evans, "just stop and think. Use
your bean, my boy! What is the one thing on earth that puts the fear of
God into Pat Noonan? It's prohibition. Look at the prohibition map out
West and at the suffrage map out West. They fit each other like the
paper on the wall. Whatever women may lack in intelligence about some
things, there is one thing woman knows--high and low, rich and poor!
She knows that the saloon is her enemy, and she hits it; and Pat Noonan,
seeing this rise of women investigating industry, makes common cause
with Martin Jaffry and the whole employing class of Whitewater against
the nosey interference of women.

"And Pat Noonan is depending on you," continued Evans. "He expects you
to rise. He expects you to go to Congress--possibly to the Senate, and
he figures that he wants to be dead sure you'll not get to truckling to
decency on the liquor question. So he ties you up--or tries you out for
a tie-up or a kidnapping; and Benjie Doolittle, who likes a sporting
event, takes a chance that you'll stand hitched in a plan to rid the
community of a political pest without seriously hurting the pest--a
friendless old maid who won't be missed for a day or two, and whose
disappearance can be hushed up one way or another after she appears too
late for the election.

"Just figure things out, George. Do you think Noonan got Mike the Goat
to assess the girls on the row a dollar apiece for your flowers from the
Young Men's Republican Club, for his health! You had the grace to thank
Pat, but if you didn't know where they came from," explained Mr. Evans
cynically, "it was because you have forgotten where all Pat's floral
offerings from the Y.M.R.C. come from at weddings and funerals! And Pat
feels that you're his kind of people.

"Politics, George, is not the chocolate eclair that you might think it,
if you didn't know it! Use your bean, my boy! Use your bean! And you'll
see why Pat Noonan lines up with the rugged captains of industry who are
the bulwarks of our American liberty. Pat uses his head for something
more than a hatrack."

The two puffed for a time in silence. Finally the host said: "Well,
let's turn in." Three minutes later George called across the upper hall
to Penfield.

"The joke's on us, Penny. Here's a note saying that Genevieve is over
w