“Well, I know as much as the county knows.  And I know something about the big dam, too.  You got into the mud, pa, but you didn’t go deep enough to find the frogs.  Fogarty got his, didn’t he?”

Mr. Knight breathed deep with indignation.

“Senator Fogarty is my good friend.  I won’t let you question his honor, although you do presume to question mine.”

“Of course he’s your friend; that’s why he’s fixed you for this New York job.  He’s not like these Reubs; he remembers a good turn and blows back with another.  He’s a real politician.”

“‘Department of Water Supply, Gas, and Electricity,’” sneered Peter.  “It sounds good, but the salary is fifteen hundred a year.  A clerk—­at my age!”

“Say, d’you suppose Tammany men live on their salaries?” Jimmy inquired.  “Wake up!  This is your chance to horn into the real herd.  In New York politics is a vocation; up here it’s a vacation--everybody tries it once, like music lessons.  If you’d been hooked up with Tammany instead of the state machine you’d have been taken care of.”

“I tell you I don’t like cities.  It’s no place to raise kids.”

At this James betrayed some irritation.  “I’m of age, and Lorelei’s a grown woman.  If we don’t get out of Vale I’ll still be a brakeman on a soda-fountain when I’m your age.”

“If you’d worked hard you’d have had an interest in the drug store now.”

“Rats!”

At this juncture Mrs. Knight, having finished the supper dishes and set her bread to rise, entered the shoddy parlor.  Jim turned to her, shrugging his shoulders with an air of washing his hands of a disagreeable subject.  “Pa’s weakened again,” he explained.  “He won’t go.”

“Me, a clerk—­at my age!” mumbled Peter.

“I’ve been trying to tell him that he’d get a half-Nelson on Tammany inside of a year.  He squeezed the sheriff’s office till it squealed, and if he can pinch a dollar out of this burg he can—­”

“You shut up!  I don’t like your way of saying things,” snarled Mr. Knight.

His wife spoke for the first time, with brief conclusiveness.

“I wrote and thanked Senator Fogarty for his offer and told him you’d accept.”

“You—­what?” Peter was dumfounded.

“Yes”—­Mrs. Knight seemed oblivious of his wrath—­“we’re going to make a change.”

Mrs. Knight was a large woman well advanced beyond that indefinite turning-point of middle age; in her unattractive face was none of the easy good nature so unmistakably stamped upon her husband’s.  Peter J. was inherently optimistic; his head was forever hidden in a roseate aura of hopefulness and expectation.  Under easy living he had grayed and fattened; his eyes were small and colorless, his cheeks full and veined with tiny sprays Of purple, his hands soft and limber.  What had once been a measure of good looks was hidden now behind a flabby, indefinite mediocrity which an unusual carefulness in dress could not disguise.  He was big-hearted in little things; in big things he was small.  He told an excellent story, but never imagined one, and his laugh was hearty though insincere.  Men who knew him well laughed with him, but did not indorse his notes.