"No more sense than to come right out and say what every one of us thinks in his secret heart about women. I think it and you think it--" "Oh, well, if you put it _that_ way," admitted young Mr. Evans gracefully. "But of course--" "Certainly, of _course!_ We all think it--sacred names of home and mother and all the rest of it; but a man running for office these days is a chump to say so, isn't he? Of course he is! What chance does it leave him? Answer me that." "Darned little, if you ask me," said Mr. Evans judicially. "Poor old George!" "Talks as if he were going to be married tomorrow instead of its having come off five weeks ago," pursued Uncle Martin bitterly. Plainly there were depths of understanding in the man, trimmer though he might be. Mr. Evans made no reply. Irrationally he was considering the terms "five weeks" and "married" in relation to a spinster who would have professed to be indignant had she known it. "Got to pull the poor devil out," said Uncle Martin, when in silence they had traversed fifty feet more of the shaded side of Maple Avenue. "How?" demanded the again practical Mr. Evans. "Make him take it back; make him recant; swing him over the last week before election. Make him eat his words with every sign of exquisite relish. Simple enough!" "How?" persisted Mr. Evans. "Wiles, tricks, subterfuges, chicanery--understand what I mean?" "Sure! I understand what you mean as well as you do, but--come down to brass tacks." "That's an entirely different matter," conceded Uncle Martin gruffly. "It may take thought." "Oh, is that all? Very well then; we'll think. I, myself, will think. First, I'll have a talk with the sodden amorist. I'll grill him. I'll find the weak spot in his armor. There must be something we can put over on him." "By fair means or foul," insisted Uncle Martin as they paused at the parting of their ways. "Low-down, underhanded work--do you get what I mean?" "I do, I do!" declared young Mr. Evans and broke once more into the buoyant stride of an earlier moment. This buoyance was interrupted but once, and briefly, ere he gained the haven of his office. As he stepped quite too buoyantly into Fountain Square, he was all but run down by the new six-cylinder roadster of Mrs. Harvey Herrington, driven by the enthusiastic owner. He regained the curb in time, with a ready and heartfelt utterance nicely befitting the emergency. The president of the Whitewater Women's Club, the Municipal League and the Suffrage Society, brought her toy to a stop fifteen feet beyond her too agile quarry, with a fine disregard for brakes and tire surfaces. She beckoned eagerly to him she might have slain. She was a large woman with an air of graceful but resolute authority; a woman good to look upon, attired with all deference to the modes of the moment, and exhaling an agreeable sense of good-will to all.