"Billy, I'm not here to talk about that reception. I don't care if there isn't a word about it."
"Oh, I get you! Don't worry about that fracas, either! I'm killing all mention of it. We're not advertising that Marion has Bolshevists. Hurts!"
"But I'm not trying to tell you your business about the paper!" the girl protested. "I'm here after news. What is the trouble at the State House?"
"I don't know," he confessed. "That is to say, I'm not on to the real inside of the proposition. We can't get our boys in and we can't get any news out! Those soldiers won't even admit the telephone crew to restore connection with the Executive Chamber."
"My father is there! He's there with the Governor."
"Well, I should say for a guess that the Senator is in the safest place in the city, judging from the way Danny Sweetsir and his warriors are on their jobs at those doors."
"Billy, who else is there with the Governor?" she questioned, anxiously, harrowed by that memory of her father's tone when he shouted the word "lunatic!"
"No know! No can tell!" returned Tasper. "But why all the excitement? There's a crowd outside the State House, but all my reports say that it's still orderly. It's only the old 'state steal' stuff warmed over by the sore-heads. But we're printing a statement from Governor North in the morning. The whole matter is going up to the full bench in the usual way. If the opposition starts any rough-stuff to-night, the gang hasn't got a Pekingese's chance in a bulldog convention. There are three machine-guns in that State House!"
A young chap who was trying hard to be professionally _blasé_ bolted into the reception-room in search of his chief. "Excuse me! But four truck-loads of men from the Agawam quarries just went through toward the State House. They had crowbars and sledge-hammers!"
"So? Warson is making a demonstration, is he? I'll be back there in a minute, Jack!" Tasper turned to Lana again. "Warson was turned down by North on the state-prison-wing stone contract. If Warson is setting up stone-cutters to be shot as rowdies, Warson and his party will be the ones who'll get hurt."
"But our state will be hurt most of all, Billy," the girl declared, with passionate earnestness. "We'll be ashamed and disgraced from one end of the country to the other. Just think of our own good state making a hideous exhibition when we're all trying so hard to get back to peace!"