"Yes, to be elected," said Garwood, yielding himself to the pillows that were piled near him. "And no sooner are we elected once than we have to begin fixing up our fences for a second term."
"Fixing up yoah fences?" said Dade, wonderingly.
"It's a political phrase," explained Emily.
"You have so many of them," said Dade, "and they ah all so unintelligible."
"They must strike a foreigner as peculiar," said Garwood. "I had never thought of that before."
"But I'm not a fo'eigneh, you know," the girl protested.
"Well, you're pretty near it," said Emily. "She's lived abroad all her life, you know--nearly," she explained aside to Garwood.
Garwood was pleased that the conversation had taken a turn which he could follow. With strange women he found small talk impossible as all men must who are not versed in the banalities of women's intercourse, though they indulge themselves for hours in the trivialities of men's gossip.
"I have never thought of it before," said Garwood, "but most of our political phrases savor of our young agricultural life; perhaps I would better say our pioneer life. There's 'log-rolling,' for instance, and 'stump speaking,' and--"
"And setting the prairies on fiah," Dade added. "I saw in the papah the othah day that you weare doing that--on the stump, they said."
"That was one of Rankin's inspired tales, no doubt. Rather a mixture of figures, too, setting the prairies on fire from the stump, don't you think? And you probably saw as well, that some of the Indians over in Moultrie have their knives out, and are after my scalp."
"That is more than agricultural, or pioneerish," said Emily; "that's actually savage."
"It's quite deliciously American," said Miss Emerson.
"And one of the few things the papers say of me that are true!" sighed Garwood.
"I'm not afraid of that," said Emily loyally; "isn't there just a little truth in the story about your setting the prairies on fire?"
Garwood laughed, the superior laugh of a man alone with women. He liked this political conversation which he could so easily dominate, quite as much as he liked Emily's frank acquiescence before Miss Emerson in her position as his affianced bride. It gave him such a sweet assurance of security in one relation at least.