“Wire especially impassioned?” he asked, with a smolder in his eyes.

“Not especially.”  I answered serenely, “One of my friend’s father is a director in the C. & G. and he is coming down with him for the conference over at Bolivar between the two roads next week.”

“Good,” answered Polk, heartily, as the flare died out of his eyes.

I was glad he didn’t have to see the wire for I wanted to use Polk’s brain a while if I could get his emotions to sleep in my presence.  It is very exasperating for a woman to be offered flirtation when she is in need of common sense from a man.  There are so many times she needs the one rather than the other, but the dear creatures refuse to realize it, if she’s under forty.

“Polk, do you see any logical, honest or dishonest way to get that Road to take the Glendale bluff line?” I asked, with trepidation, for that was the first time I had ever even begun to discuss anything intelligently with Polk.

“None in the world, Evelina,” he answered with a nice, straight, intellectuality showing over his whole face and even his lazy, posing figure.  “I remonstrated with James and Henry Carruthers both when they used their influence to have the bonds voted and I told James it was madness to invest in all that field and swamp property with just a chance of the shops.  The trouble was that James had always left all his business to Henry, along with the firm’s business, for a man can’t be the kind of lawyer James is, and carry the details of the handling of filthy lucre in the same mind that can make a speech like the one he made down in Nashville last April, on the exchange of the Judiciary.  James can be the Governor of this good State any time he wants to, or could, if Henry hadn’t turned toes and left him such a bag to hold—­no reference to Sallie’s figure intended, which is all to the good if you like that kind of curves!”

I took a moment to choose my words.

“The C. & G. is going to take that bluff route,” I answered calmly from somewhere inside me that I had never used to speak from before.

“Do you know anything of the character of Mrs. Joshua?” asked Polk, admiringly, but slipping down from his intellectual attitude of mind and body and edging an inch nearer.  “Bet she had a strong mind or Joshua never could have pulled off that sun and moon stunt.”

“Do you know, Polk, there is one woman in the world who could—­could handle you?” I said, as a sudden vision of what Jane would do, if Polk sat on her skirts as he did on mine, flashed across my troubled brain.

“I’d be mighty particular as to who handles me,” he answered impudently, “Want to try?” And with the greatest audacity he laid his head gently against my knee.  I let it rest there a second and then tipped it back against the arm of the rocker.

“It does hurt me to see a man like Cousin James fairly throttled by women as he is being,” I said as I looked across the street and noted that the porch of Widegables was full to overflowing with the household of women.