"Why," said Haakon, "you will yust begin to receive when your salary begins in Yanuary." "Oh, no!" said Jennie. "I've received much more than that now! You don't know how proud I feel. So many nice men I never knew before, and all my old friends like you working for me in the convention and at the polls, just as if I amounted to something." "And you don't know how proud I feel," said Haakon, "to have in county office a little girl I used to hold on my lap." In early times, when Haakon was a flat-capped immigrant boy, he had earned the initial payment on his first eighty acres of prairie land as a hired man on Colonel Woodruff's farm. Now he was a rather richer man than the colonel, and not a little proud of his ascent to affluence. He was a mild-spoken, soft-voiced Scandinavian, quite completely Americanized, and possessed of that aptitude for local politics which makes so good a citizen of the Norwegian and Swede. His influence was always worth fifty to sixty Scandinavian votes in any county election. He was a good party man and conscious of being entitled to his voice in party matters. This seemed to him an opportunity for exerting a bit of political influence. "Yennie," said he, "this man Yim Irwin needs to be lined up." "Lined up! What do you mean?" "The way he is doing in the school," said Haakon, "is all wrong. If you can't line him up, he will make you trouble. We must look ahead. Everybody has his friends, and Yim Irwin has his friends. If you have trouble with him, his friends will be against you when we want to nominate you for a second term. The county is getting close. If we go to conwention without your home delegation it would weaken you, and if we nominate you, every piece of trouble like this cuts down your wote. You ought to line him up and have him do right." "But he is so funny," said Jennie. "He likes you," said Haakon. "You can line him up." Jennie blushed, and to conceal her slight embarrassment, got out for the purpose of cranking her machine. "But if I can not line him up?" said she. "I tank," said Haakon, "if you can't line him up, you will have a chance to rewoke his certificate when you take office."