Page:The council of seven.djvu/53

 "A mind at work there." The book was placed loverly in her hand. "Only one hopes"

Sighing delicately he returned to his chair. His air had now become that of one who has to reconcile a very good heart with the sterner impulses of duty.

"You hope?" She caught up the broken phrase with an eagerness that was a little pitiful.

"Nothing, nothing."

She shivered slightly. Madness in the mother's family.

"Wonderful faculty he has"—the Colossus seemed again to be thinking aloud—"of swaying audiences. Rather picked audiences, too. And as men are reckoned nowadays, hardly more than a boy."

"He's thirty-eight."

"Almost an infant prodigy!" The deep laugh was very good to hear. "I never heard Gladstone. Before my day. But one or two of the fathers who go back to prehistoric times say that your young man is such another, but that the People's John—proud title the People's John—and only thirty-eight—has one shot in his game that the G. O. M. never had. It's the master-shot, too, believe me. Humor. Cool-drawn humor. With that in your bag, you've always a chance of holing out under bogey. Don't you agree?"

"Yes, I hope he has it," said the cautious Helen. "But whether on the platform it quite 'gets over,' as they say in the theater, one is never quite sure. When