“Are you a reader of poetry?” asked Dan, as Bassett carefully collected the books and returned them to the safe.

“No.  That is something we leave behind us with our youth,” he said; and looking down at the bent head and sturdy shoulders, and watching the strong fingers turning the key, Dan wondered what the man’s youth had been and what elements were mixed in him that soft textures of leather and delicate tracings of gold on brown and scarlet and olive could so delight him.  His rather jaunty attitude toward the “Home Life of Hoosier Statesmen” experienced a change.  Morton Bassett was not a man who could be hit off in a few hundred words, but a complex character he did not pretend to understand.  Threads of various hues had passed before him, but how to intertwine them was a question that already puzzled the reporter.  Bassett had rested his hand on Dan’s shoulder for a moment as the younger man bent over one of the prized volumes, and Dan was not insensible to the friendliness of the act.

Mrs. Bassett and the two children appeared at the door a little later.

“Come in, Hallie,” said the politician; “all of you come in.”

He introduced the reporter to his wife and to Marian, the daughter, and Blackford, the son.

“The children were just going up,” said Mrs. Bassett.  “As it’s Saturday they have an hour added to their evening.  I think I heard Mr. Bassett talking of books a moment ago.  It’s not often he brings out his first editions for a visitor.”

They talked of books for a moment, while the children listened.  Then Bassett recurred to the fact, already elicited, that Harwood was a Yale man, whereupon colleges were discussed.

“Many of our small fresh-water colleges do excellent work,” remarked Bassett.  “Some educator has explained the difference between large and small colleges by saying that in the large one the boy goes through more college, but in the small one more college goes through the boy.  Of course I’m not implying, Mr. Harwood, that that was true in your case.”

“Oh, I’m not sensitive about that, Mr. Bassett.  And I beg not to be taken as an example of what Yale does for her students.  Some of the smaller colleges stand for the best things; there’s Madison College, here in our own state—­its standards are severely high, and the place itself has quality, atmosphere—­you feel, even as a casual visitor, that it’s the real thing.”

“So I’ve always heard,” remarked Mrs. Bassett.  “My father always admired Madison.  Strange to say, I have never been there.  Are you acquainted in Montgomery?”

Bassett bent forward slightly at the question.

“I was there for an hour or so last spring; but I was in a hurry.  I didn’t even take time to run into my fraternity house, though I saw its banner on the outer wall.”

“Your newspaper work must give you many interesting adventures,” suggested the politician.