“It’s making me thin,” she ventured as she shook a little shower of tears off her black lashes and again smilingly regained control of her own hands, but displaying a slender blue-veined wrist for his sympathetic inspection.

“Help!” exclaimed David, taking possession of the wrist and circling it with his thumb and forefinger.  “Let me send for a crate of eggs and a case of the malt-milk!  You poor starved peach-bud you, why won’t you marry me and let me feed you?  I’m going—­”

“But you and the major both recommended ‘lovers’ troubles’ to me, David,” Phoebe hazarded.

“I only recommended my own special brand, remember,” retorted David.  “I won’t have you ill!  I’m going to see that you do as I say about your—­”

“David Kildare,” remarked the major from the door into the hall, “if you use that tone to the grand jury they will shut up every saloon in Hell’s Half Acre.  Hail the judge!  My boy, my boy, I knew you’d line up when the time came—­and the line!”

“Can I count on the full artillery of the Gray Picket brigade, Major?” demanded David with delight in his eyes as he returned the major’s vigorous hand-shake.

“Hot shot, grape, canister and shrapnel, sir!  Horses in lather, guns on the wheel and bayonets set.  We’ll bivouac in the camp of the enemy on the night of the election!  We’ll—­”

“I don’t believe you will want to lie down in the lair of the blind tiger as soon as that, Major,” laugher Phoebe.

“Phoebe,” answered the major, “politics makes strange bed-fellows.  Mike O’Rourke, the boss of the democratic Irish, was around this morning hunting for David Kildare with the entire green grocer’s vote in his pocket.  He spoke of the boy as his own son.”

“Good for old Mike!” laughed David.  “It’s not every boy who can boast an intimate friendship with his corner grocer from childhood up.  It means a certain kind of—–­self-denial in the matter of apples and other temptations.  I used to go to the point of an occasional errand for him.  Those were the days, Phoebe, when you sat on the front steps and played hollyhock dolls.  Wish I’d kidnapped you then—­when I could!”

“It would have saved us both lots of time—­and trouble,” answered Phoebe daringly from the protection of the major’s presence.

“David, sir,” said the major who had been busy settling himself in his chair and lighting his pipe during this exchange of pleasantries between David and Phoebe, to the like of which he was thoroughly accustomed, “this is going to be a fight to the ditches.  I believe the whisky ring that controls this city to be the worst machine south of Mason and Dixon’s.  State-wide prohibition voted six months ago and every saloon in the town going full tilt night and day!  They own the city council, the board of public works and the mayor, but none of that compares in seriousness to the debauching of our criminal courts.  The grand jury is helpless if the judge dismisses every true bill they return—­and Taylor does it every time if it is a whisky law indictment or pertaining thereto, and most of the bills are at least distantly pertaining.  So there you have us bound and helpless—­a disgrace to the nation, sir, and a reproach to good government!”