"Some of the boys--Jim Rankin and some others--suggested that I ought to go to Mr. Harkness," he said, when he had finished. He had adroitly calculated the effect this suggestion would have upon her, and he was certain of her reply.
"Go to Mr. Harkness, would they? Humph!" Her eyes blazed as she almost snorted this. "I'd have them know if we are poor we're not goin' to be beholden to the Harknesses in any such way as that!"
"That's just what I told them," said the son, quietly.
"An' you told 'em just right!" she added. She returned to her darning, holding up the sock, stretched over her extended fingers, before the lamp.
"But I don't know whom to go to," Garwood said presently, "and I've got to go to somebody."
"Can't you possibly get along somehow?" she asked. "Tell 'em you just ain't got any money to give 'em."
Garwood gave a contemptuous "Humph!" and then, made impatient by her utter failure to comprehend the grim necessity of a candidate's position with election but a week away, he said:
"Didn't I just say I'd got to have some?"
"Well, mother don't pretend to know about politics. Your pa never had anything to do with 'em, you know." She hastened to say this in her mild voice, to conciliate his petulance with her.
"Oh, I know, mother," he rejoined; "but it's a ground-hog case with me. I've got to meet my assessments some way. It wouldn't be honourable not to."
He stretched out his long legs and gazed into the grate.
"I'll have to borrow of some one, I don't know who."
He slid farther down into his chair and crowded his hands into his trousers' pockets, a physical posture at one with his mental attitude.
He was scowling, his face was long, and he said this with the deep tone of a final and absolute despair.
"Some one will lend it to you," the mother said. "You mustn't get so down-hearted."
"Well, I'd like to know who!" he said, casting a challenge at her from his eyes.
"Why, some o' the banks--they loan money."
"The banks!" he said, mocking her tone. "The banks! They'd be likely to lend me any without security, wouldn't they?"
"Well, Jerome, don't get mad with mother," she said. "She'd help you if she could."
He was silent; silent for a long time. She looked up at him now and then, cautiously, but she understood his humor, and she thought by the knitting of his brows that he was deep in thought. Out of his cogitations he came after a time, and then to say, with a mild, hesitating approach to their result: