“The same, like the mind reader you are!  Say, that boy isn’t stuck on you or anything.  He came up here yesterday afternoon when the boss was out and wanted to talk things over.  He seemed to think I hadn’t anything to do but be a sister to him and hear his troubles.  Well, I’ve got embarrassments of my own, with that true sport his papa sending me an offer of a hundred per month to work for him.  One hundred dollars a month in advance!  This, Mr. Harwood, is private and confidential.  I guess I haven’t worked at the State House without learning a few tricks in this mortal vale of politics.”

She had calculated nicely the effect of this shot.  Harwood might treat her, as she said, like a step-child with a harelip, but occasionally she made him sit up.  He sat up now.  He remarked with the diplomatic unconcern that it was best to employ with her:—­

“Refused the offer, did you, Miss Farrell?”

“I certainly did.  As between a fat old sport like Ed Thatcher and a gentleman like Mr. Bassett, money doesn’t count—­not even with a p.w.g., or poor working girl, like me.  Hush!—­are we quite alone?” She bent toward the door dramatically.  “What he was playing for, as neat as a hatpin in your loved one’s eye, was some facts about the boss’s committee work in that last session I worked at the State House.  Cute of Thatcher?  Well, not so awful bright!  He doesn’t know what he’s up against if he thinks Mort Bassett can be caught on flypaper, and you can be dead sure I’m not going to sprinkle the sugar to catch our boss with.  All that Transportation Committee business was just as straight as the way home; but”—­Miss Farrell tapped her mouth daintily with her fingers to stifle an imaginary yawn—­“but little Rose brought down her shorthand notebooks marked ‘M.B. personal,’ and the boss and I burned them yesterday morning early, right there in that grate in his room.  That’s what I think of Mr. Ed Thatcher.  A pearl necklace for my birthday ought to be about right for that.”

Harwood had been drinking this in as he opened and sorted his letters.  He paused and stared at her absently.

“You referred to a caller a moment ago—­the gentleman who annoyed you so much on the telephone.  Was I to call him or anything like that?”

“He left a good many orders, but I think you were to eat food with him in the frosty halls of the University Club almost at once.  He’s in a state of mind.  In love with the daughter of his father’s enemy—­just like a Park Theatre thriller.  Wants you to tell him what to do; and you will pardon me for suggesting that if there’s to be an elopement you write it up yourself for the ‘Courier.’  I was talking to a friend of mine who’s on the ding-ding desk at the Whitcomb and she says the long-distance business in that tavern is painful to handle—­hot words flying over the state about this Thatcher-Bassett rumpus.  You may take it from me that the fight is warm, and I guess somebody will know more after the convention.  But say—!”