“Hello, Major.  Glad to see you, Mr. Slate!  How are things down your way, Colonel?”

A tired negro waiter, with a napkin slung over his arm, drew back the chairs and deposited two plates of lukewarm soup before the newcomers, after which he lifted a brush of variegated tissue paper and made valiant assault upon the flies which overran the tables.  Stale odours of over-cooked food weighted the atmosphere, and waiters bearing enormous trays above their heads jostled one another as they threaded their difficult ways.  Occasionally the clamour of voices was lost in the clatter of breaking dishes.  Tom Bassett pushed his plate away and mopped his large forehead.  He appeared to have developed without aging in the last fifteen years—­still presenting an aspect of invincible respectability.

“It’s ninety-two degrees in the shade, if it’s anything,” he declared, adding, “Has anybody seen Webb to-day?”

The colonel, whose name was Diggs, nodded with his mouth full, and, having swallowed at his leisure, proceeded to reply, holding his knife and fork poised for service.  He was fair to the point of insipidity, and his weak blue eyes bulged with joviality.

“Shook hands with him at the train last night,” he said.  “Hall was a day ahead of time.  Great politician, Hall.  Working for Webb like a beaver.  Here, waiter!  More potatoes.”

“I went to sleep last night to the music of Webb’s men,” said Galt, “and I awoke to the tune of Crutchfield.  I don’t believe either side went to bed.  My wonder is whom they found to work on.”

Slate, a muscular little man, with a nervous affection about the mouth that gave him an appearance of being continually on the point of a surprising utterance, hesitated over, caught, and finally landed his speech.  “They’re dead against Webb down my way,” he said.  “Our delegation is instructed to vote for anybody that favours retrenchment, unless it’s Webb—­they won’t have Webb if he moves to run the State on the two-cent system.  If we’d cast a quarter of a vote for him they’d drum us out of the district.  It’s all because he voted for that railroad bill in Washington last winter.  We hate a railroad as a bull hates a red flag.”

Major Baylor, a courtly gentleman, with a face that bore traces of a survival of the old Virginian legal type, spoke for the first time.

“Fauquier stands to a man for Dudley Webb,” he said.  “He has a large following in my section, and I understand, by the way, that if Hartley withdraws after the first ballot, it will mean a clear gain for Webb in the eighth district.  He’s safe, I think.”

“Oh, we’re Crutchfield strong,” laughed the colonel good-humouredly, reaching for a toothpick from the glass stand in the centre of the table.  “We think a man deserves something who hasn’t missed a convention for fourteen years.”

There was a spirit of ridicule tempered with good-humour about the group, which showed it to be, in the main, indifferent to the result—­an attitude in vivid contrast to the effervescent partisanship of the leaders.  With the exception of the colonel, whose heart was in his dinner, they appeared to be unconcerned spectators of the events of the day.