An occasional roar from within testified to Mr. Pettit’s continued enjoyment of his own jokes.

“You know,” Rose continued, “I learned a good deal those winters I spent at the State House, when I was stenog to certain senate committees.  I see where you stand now, all right, Colonel.  I always knew you didn’t belong in that bunch of lobbyists that was always gum-shoeing through the marble halls of the State House.  Thatcher sends somebody around to look me up every little while to see if he can’t coax something out of me,—­something he can use, you know.”

“Thatcher oughtn’t to do that.  If you want me to, I’ll pull him off.”

“No; I guess I can take care of myself.  He”—­Rose indicated the inner office with a slight movement of the head, “he never tries to pump me.  He ain’t that kind of a fighter.  But everybody that’s anywhere near the inside knows that Thatcher carries a sharp knife.  He’s going to shed some pink ink before he gets through.  Are you on?”

They exchanged a glance.

“Something that isn’t nice?”

Rose nodded.

“I hate to see that sort of thing brought into the game.  But they’ll never find anything.  The gentleman we are referring to works on noiseless rollers.”  Colonel Ramsay indicated the closed door by an almost imperceptible gesture of interrogation; and Rose replied by compressing her lips and shaking her head.

“He isn’t in on that; he’s a gentleman, you know; not a mud-slinger.”

“He might have to stand for anything Thatcher springs.  Thatcher has developed into a shrewd and hard fighter.  The other crowd don’t laugh at him any more; it was his work that got our legislative ticket through last fall when Bassett passed the word that we should take a licking just to magnify his importance.  Is Thatcher in town now?”

“No; that boy of his with the bad lung had to go off to the Adirondacks, and he went with him.”

The inner door opened at this moment, disclosing the Honorable Isaac Pettit, who greeted Ramsay effusively.

“What is immortality, gentlemen!” the Honorable Isaac Pettit inquired, clinging to the Colonel’s hand.  “We had a little social gathering for our new pastor up at Fraser the other night, and I sprung a new game on the old folks.  Offered a prize for anybody who could name all the Vice-Presidents of the United States since Lincoln’s administration, and they couldn’t even get past Grant—­and Schuyler Colfax being right off our own Hoosier pastures!  Then we tried for the Democratic candidates for President, beginning back at the war, and they couldn’t even start.  One young chap piped up and said Jeff Davis—­oh, Lord!—­which reminds me that the teaching of history in the public schools ain’t what it ought to be.  They hadn’t heard of Hancock, and when somebody said Blaine, the teacher of the infant class in our Sunday School said Blaine who?  That reminds me of one time when I met Dan Voorhees, than whom God Almighty never made a nobler soul; I met Dan down here in the lobby of the old Bates House, carrying a ‘Harper’s Weekly’ with one of Tom Nast’s cartoons spread wide open.  You know Dan had—­”