e
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--"

Mr. Britt's patience was ground between the millstones of anger and
indigestion. He smacked the flat of his hand on his desk. "When I want
a stump speech out of you, Orne, I'll drop you a postcard and give you
thirty days' notice so that you can get up a good one. You have made a
short day of it, as I said, but you needn't feel called on to fill it up
with a lecture." Mr. Britt continued on pompously and revealed that he
placed his own favorable construction on the emissary's early return
from the field. "You didn't have to go very far, hey, to find out how I
stand for that nomination?"

"I went far enough so that you can depend