Sidling from her seat, Miss Lane moved over to a chair near the fire.
“I’ll take those letters when you’re ready,” she said. “Why, I don’t know a single thing about any Wheeler. Do you?”
“Not definitely. He’s a man who had an awful fight with Mr. Appleby, long ago. I’ve heard allusions to him now and then, but I know no details.”
“I, either. But, it seems we’re to go there. Only for a night, and then, on to Boston! Won’t I be glad to go!”
“We’ll only be there a few days. I’m more interested in this Wheeler performance. I don’t understand it. Who’s Wheeler, anyhow?”
“Dunno. If Sammy turns up this morning, he may enlighten us.”
Sammy did turn up, and not long after the conversation young Appleby strolled into the office.
Though still looked upon as a boy by his father, the man was of huge proportions and of an important, slightly overbearing attitude.
Somewhat like his parent in appearance, young Sam, as he was always called, had more grace and ease, if less effect of power. He smiled genially and impartially; he seemed cordial and friendly to all the world, and he was a general favorite. Yet so far he had achieved no great thing, had no claim to any especial record in public or private life.
At forty, unmarried and unattached, his was a case of an able mentality and a firm, reliable character, with no opportunity offered to prove its worth. A little more initiative and he would have made opportunities for himself; but a nature that took the line of least resistance, a philosophy that believed in a calm acceptance of things as they came, left Samuel Appleby, junior, pretty much where he was when he began. If no man could say aught against him, equally surely no man could say anything very definite for him. Yet many agreed that he was a man whose powers would develop with acquired responsibilities, and already he had a following.
“Hello, little one,” he greeted Genevieve, carelessly, as he sat down near Keefe. “I say, old chap, you’re going down to the Wheelers’ to-day, I hear.”
“Yes; this afternoon,” and the secretary looked up inquiringly.
“Well, I’ll tell you what. You know the governor’s going there to get Wheeler’s aid in my election boom, and I can tell you a way to help things along, if you agree. See?”