Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/332

 pose, from old Bradford himself—Bill Toole offers to compromise on a good ticket if I'm dropped."

"No!" Harris cried. "No! That's not true."

"Not in so many words. Of course not! But if you insisted on having me on the ticket it would come to that. Isn't that so? Isn't it?"

"I don't believe you could possibly be re-elected."

"We didn't believe, in the first place, that I could be elected. Yet we made the fight."

"There's no necessity of running any such risk. We're to have the nomination for the office. We'll pick a good man."

Wickson took up some papers on his desk. "If it were only a question of the office," he said, "I'd be glad to get out. But there's more than that. There's— However, it's useless for us to talk. You'll have to excuse me. I'm busy." He unfolded a sheet of typewriting and pushed the button for his stenographer.

As McPhee Harris reached for his silk hat he looked down on ingratitude coldly. "I expected as much," he said. "Good morning." Wickson did not reply. He allowed Harris to go out of his life as he had passed his father in the field, plowing.

His stenographer answered the bell, and without raising his eyes he muttered, "Get me Collins on the 'phone."

The clerk replied, "He's been waiting here to see you."