The clergyman, following his line of duty, was not in a mood to accept delicate hints regarding social engagements.  He stood his ground.

“Our business will occupy but a short time, and I suggest that it will be for your personal interest to listen now, sir.”

It was an unfortunate bit of obstinacy.

“I regulate my own hours for engagements, Mr. Prouty.  You have come on your own business, and it must await my convenience.”

“It’s your business I come on, General Waymouth, and I advise you to listen!  And I will add that it will not help you with the temperance people of this State if they are told that within two hours after your nomination you are consorting with the arch-enemy of temperance reform in our midst!”

With two strides the General was back at his door.  He opened it.

“Be so kind as to leave the room, gentlemen,” he invited, icily.  “I’ll not detain you even to have you apologize for your intrusion on my privacy or ask pardon of a guest whom you’ve insulted!”

They obeyed him, sullenly.  Even their effrontery could not withstand that dignity.  But they muttered among themselves, and one man called back over his shoulder:  “It isn’t the first time, General, that a man brave enough to lead battle charges hasn’t shown that he’s got the spirit to declare for the right against the wrong, when politics stands by with open ears!”

“There go some of the reformers you were asking your grandfather about a few weeks ago, Harlan,” sneered the indignant chairman.  “Those are the men who are holding themselves up as examples for all the rest of men to follow.  Every one else is a rummy and a hellion, according to their ranking.”

“As bad an element as the rumsellers themselves,” declared the General—­“men of that type!  I’m speaking now of the interests of true reform—­reform that gets to the individual and is something else than this everlasting wrangle and racket between factions.  I like fighting, but I like to have a natural fighter admit he’s in it just for the sake of fighting—­not claim it’s all for morality’s sake!”

“Then what are you?” blurted Presson, but checked himself in evident confusion.

“Eh?” inquired General Waymouth, mildly.

“I—­I don’t know what it was I had in my mind—­guess I was thinking about something else.”

But the General smiled as though he understood.  Then he went into the inner room, explaining that he wished to make himself presentable to the ladies.

The chairman took a crafty survey of Harlan.

“Between you and me, my boy,” he said, getting back upon his old-time footing with Thornton’s grandson, “the General has got both of my eyes put out, so far’s his politics go.  Did you hear him just rip into those ramrodders?  And yet he’s been stiffer and straighter than the worst of ’em since he struck this city.  I’d like to know who in thunder he is playing with, anyway!  What does he say to you, on the side?”