LITMIR.BIZ

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so froward—or forward, whichever it is; I always get those two words balled up. This is serious business. I've never heard of such a preposterous suggestion as Linda—Lorinda and I being lovers. My dear child, you simply can't be flip about such final things as that!"

      "Oh, can't I! Oh, sorry, Dad. I just mean—About Mother Emma. Course I wouldn't have anybody hurt her, not even Lindy and you. But, why, bless you, Venerable, she'd never even dream of such a thing. You could have your nice pie and she'd never miss one single slice. Mother's mental grooves aren't, uh, well, they aren't so very sex-conditioned, if that's how you say it—more sort of along the new-vacuum-cleaner complex, if you know what I mean—page Freud! Oh, she's swell, but not so analytical and—"

      "Are those your ethics, then?"

      "Huh? Well for cat's sake, why not? Have a swell time that'll get you full of beans again and yet not hurt anybody's feelings? Why, say, that's the entire second chapter in my book on ethics!"

      "Sissy! Have you, by any chance, any vaguest notion of what you're talking about, or think you're talking about? Of course—and perhaps we ought to be ashamed of our cowardly negligence—but I, and I don't suppose your mother, have taught you so very much about 'sex' and—"

      "Thank heaven! You spared me the dear little flower and its simply shocking affair with that tough tomcat of a tiger lily in the next bed—excuse me—I mean in the next plot. I'm so glad you did. Pete's sake! I'd certainly hate to blush every time I looked at a garden!"

      "Sissy! Child! Please! You mustn't be so beastly cute! These are all weighty things—"

      Penitently: "I know, Dad. I'm sorry. It's just—if you only knew how wretched I feel when I see you so wretched and so quiet and everything. This horrible Windrip, League of Forgodsakers business has got you down, hasn't it! If you're going to fight 'em, you've got to get some pep back into you—you've got to take off the lace mitts and put on the brass knuckles—and I got kind of a hunch Lorinda might do that for you, and only her. Heh! Her pretending to be so high-minded! (Remember that old wheeze Buck Titus used to love so—'If you're saving the fallen women, save me one'? Oh, not so good. I guess we'll take that line right out of the sketch!) But anyway, our Lindy has a pretty moist and hungry eye—"

      "Impossible! Impossible! By the way, Sissy! What do you know about all of this? Are you a virgin?"

      "Dad! Is that your idea of a question to—Oh, I guess I was asking for it. And the answer is: Yes. So far. But not promising one single thing about the future. Let me tell you right now, if conditions in this country do get as bad as you've been claiming they will, and Julian Falck is threatened with having to go to war or go to prison or some rotten thing like that, I'm most certainly not going to let any maidenly modesty interfere between me and him, and you might just as well be prepared for that!"

      "It is Julian then, not Malcolm?"

      "Oh, I think so. Malcolm gives me a pain in the neck. He's getting all ready to take his proper place as a colonel or something with Windrip's wooden soldiers. And I am so fond of Julian! Even if he is the doggonedest, most impractical soul—like his grandfather—or you! He's a sweet thing. We sat up purring pretty nothings till about two, last night, I guess."

      "Sissy! But you haven't—Oh, my little girl! Julian is probably decent enough—not a bad sort—but you—You haven't let Julian take any familiarities with you?"

      "Dear quaint old word! As if anything could be so awfully much more familiar than a good, capable, 10,000 h.p. kiss! But darling, just so you won't worry—no. The few times, late nights, in our sitting room, when I've slept with Julian—well, we've slept!"

      "I'm glad, but—Your apparent—probably only apparent—information on a variety of delicate subjects slightly embarrasses me."

      "Now you listen to me! And this is something you ought to be telling me, not me you, Mr. Jessup! Looks as if this country, and most of the world—I am being serious, now, Dad; plenty serious, God help us all!—it looks as if we're headed right back into barbarism. It's war! There's not going to be much time for coyness and modesty, any more than there is for a base-hospital nurse when they bring in the wounded. Nice young ladies—they're out! It's Lorinda and me that you men are going to want to have around, isn't it—isn't it—now isn't it?"

      "Maybe—perhaps," Doremus sighed, depressed at seeing a little more of his familiar world slide from under his feet as the flood rose.

      They were coming into the Jessup driveway. Shad Ledue was just leaving the garage.

      "Skip in the house, quick, will you!" said Doremus to his girl.

      "Sure. But do be careful, hon!" She no longer sounded like his little daughter, to be protected, adorned with pale blue ribbons, slyly laughed at when she tried to show off in grown-up ways. She was suddenly a dependable comrade, like Lorinda.

      Doremus slipped resolutely out of his car and said calmly:

      "Shad!"

      "Yuh?"

      "D'you take the car keys into the kitchen?"

      "Huh? No. I guess I left 'em in the car."

      "I've told you a hundred times they belong inside."

      "Yuh? Well, how'd you like Miss Cecilia's driving? Have a good visit with old Mrs. Pike?"

      He was derisive now, beyond concealment.

      "Ledue, I rather think you're fired—right now!"

      "Well! Just feature that! O.K., Chief! I was just going to tell you that we're forming a second chapter of the League of Forgotten Men in the Fort, and I'm to be the secretary. They don't pay much—only about twice what you pay me—pretty tight-fisted—but it'll mean something in politics. Good-night!"

      Afterward, Doremus was sorry to remember that, for all his longshoreman clumsiness, Shad had learned a precise script in his red Vermont schoolhouse, and enough mastery of figures so that probably he would be able to keep this rather bogus secretaryship. Too bad!

      When, as League secretary, a fortnight later, Shad wrote to him demanding a donation of two hundred dollars to the League, and Doremus refused, the Informer began to lose circulation within twenty-four hours.

      15

       Table of Contents

      Usually I'm pretty mild, in fact many of my friends are kind enough to call it "Folksy," when I'm writing or speechifying. My ambition is to "live by the side of the road and be a friend to man." But I hope that none of the gentlemen who have honored me with their enmity think for one single moment that when I run into a gross enough public evil or a persistent enough detractor, I can't get up on my hind legs and make a sound like a two-tailed grizzly in April. So right at the start of this account of my ten-year fight with them, as private citizen, State Senator, and U. S. Senator, let me say that the Sangfrey River Light, Power, and Fuel Corporation are—and I invite a suit for libel—the meanest, lowest, cowardliest gang of yellow-livered, back-slapping, hypocritical gun-toters, bomb-throwers, ballot-stealers, ledger-fakers, givers of bribes, suborners of perjury, scab-hirers, and general lowdown crooks, liars, and swindlers that ever tried to do an honest servant of the People out of an election—not but what I have always succeeded in licking them, so that my indignation at these homicidal kleptomaniacs is not personal but entirely on behalf of the general public.

       Zero Hour, Berzelius Windrip.

      On Wednesday, January 6, 1937, just a fortnight before his inauguration, President-Elect Windrip announced his appointments of cabinet members and of diplomats.

      Secretary of State: his former secretary and press-agent, Lee Sarason, who also took the position of High Marshal, or Commander-in-Chief, of the Minute Men, which organization was to be established permanently, as an innocent marching club.

      Secretary of the Treasury: one

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