“Here, here! I may have been sick along the last of it, but not at first when you and Thacher were laying your plans. I know as much about those plans as you do, I guess. I have made it my business to find out. You started planning away last December, a month after you were elected to Washington. Before that election you were crawling around here on your hands and knees, begging me to please do this and that to help you get votes. Why, confound you, you couldn’t have been nominated if it hadn’t been for me. And away back in the beginning, when that cranberry bill had you licked so that you couldn’t have been elected poundkeeper, I gave you the chance to square yourself. I was the fool there, of course; but I thought you were so scared you would behave yourself for the rest of your life. Bah! Don’t you say ‘nonsense’ to me again.... Here! You aren’t going yet. This little talk of ours has only begun.” The Honorable Alpheus was on his feet, his round face crimson. He snatched his hat from the table. “I don’t want to hear any more from you, Townsend,” he declared. “You are a sick man--and an old man. If you weren’t--” “Here! here! I’m not sick. And I’m not so darned old that I can’t see through a jellyfish. I saw through you the first time you came into this room. And I saw through what you were up to with this post-office business the minute I heard of it. You probably as good as promised Sim Thacher the post office away back when you were hunting the nomination. You would have come to me about it months ago if you hadn’t figured I was down and out and not worth considering any more. Elisha Cook and the Supreme Court had licked me, and so you thought you could do it. Pshaw!” in huge disgust; “Elisha Cook is a _man_, whatever else he is.” The Honorable Mooney drew himself erect. His chest expanded. “Townsend,” he declaimed, with all the dignity of his platform manner, “I make allowances for you. I realize you are not well. And I suppose it is natural you should be disappointed because your friend--your housekeeper I am told she is now--has lost the post office here. I am sorry for her myself, in a way. But I have the interests of the folks I represent in Congress to consider. It is my duty to think of them and act for their good. Miss Clark has not--no, sir, she has _not_ run that office as it ought to be run. She has neglected it. More than that, she has been spending the public money to hire that worthless brother of--”