Mr. Britt, back in his office, allowing his various affairs to be digested—­his dinner, his political project, the valentine—­his hopes in general—­found that soggy cabbage to be a particularly tough proposition.  He was not sufficiently imaginative to view his punishment by the intractable cabbage as a premonitory hint that he was destined to suffer as much in his pride as he did in his stomach.  His pangs took his mind off the other affairs.  He was pallid and his lips were blue when Emissary Orne came waddling into the office.

Mr. Orne, in addition to other characteristics that suggested a fowl, had a sagging dewlap, and the February nip had colored it into resemblance to a rooster’s wattles.  When he came in Mr. Orne’s face was sagging, in general.  It was a countenance that was already ridged into an expression of sympathy.  When he set eyes on Britt the expression of woe was touched up with alarm.  But that the alarm had to do with the personal affairs of Mr. Orne was shown when he inquired apprehensively whether Mr. Britt would settle then and there for the day’s work.

The candidate looked up at the office timepiece.  “It ain’t three o’clock.  I don’t call it a day.”

“You call it a day in banking.  I’ve got the same right to call it a day in politics.”

“What infernal notion is afoul of you, Orne, grabbing for my money before you report?”

“I do business with a man according to his own rules—­and then he’s suited, or ought to be.  You collect sharp on the dot after service has been rendered.  So do I.”  Mr. Orne was displaying more acute nervous apprehension.  “And the understanding was that you’d leave it to me as your manager, and wouldn’t go banging around, yourself.”

Britt found the agent’s manner puzzling.  “I haven’t been out of this office, except to go to my dinner.  I haven’t talked politics with anybody.”

“Oh!” remarked Orne, showing relief.  “Perhaps, then, it was the way the light fell on your face.”  He peered closely at his client.  Mr. Britt’s color was coming back.  Orne’s cryptic speeches and his haste to collect had warmed the banker’s wrath.  “It’ll be ten dollars, as we agreed.”

Britt yanked a big wallet from his breast pocket, plucked out a bill, and shoved it at Orne.  The latter set the bill carefully into a big wallet of his own, “sunk” the calfskin, and buttoned up his buffalo coat.

“It does beat blazes,” stated “Sniffer” Orne, “what a messed up state all politics is in since this prim’ry business has put the blinko onto caucuses and conventions.  Caucuses was sensible, Mr. Britt.  Needn’t tell me!  Voters liked to have the wear and tear off ’em.  Now a voter gets into that booth and has to caucus by himself, and he’s either so puffed up by importance that he thinks he’s the whole party or else—­”