Neal, who had doubtless read somewhere that
the proper moment to terminate a call is on some telling speech of one's
own.
"I wonder what he's up to," mused Queed.
He brought his chair to horizontal and addressed himself to his
reformatory article. He sharpened his pencil; tangled his great hand
into his hair; and presently put down an opening sentence that fully
satisfied him, his own sternest critic. Then a memory of his visitor
returned to his mind, and he thought pleasurably:
"Plonny knows he is beaten. That's what's the matter with him."
Close observers had often noted, however, that that was very seldom the
matter with Plonny, and bets as to his being beaten were always to be
placed with diffidence and at very long odds. Plonny had no idea
whatever of being beaten on the reformatory measure: on the contrary, it
was the reformatory measure which was to be beaten. Possibly Mr. Neal
was a white-souled patriot chafing under threatened extravagance in an
economy year. Possibly he was impelled by more machine-like exigencies,
such as the need of just that hundred thousand dollars to create a few
nice new berths for the "organization.
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