man's private life, whatever his political faults may have been, there
was magic in the clasp of his hand and the cordial glow of his smile.
He was always responsive; he stood always on the same level, high or
low, with his companion of the moment: he was as incapable of looking up
as he was of looking down; he was equally without reverence and without
condescension. It was the law of his nature that he should give himself
emphatically to the just and the unjust alike.

"He came home with me because I hurt my foot," Patty was saying.

Had she forgotten already, Stephen asked himself cynically, that it was
not her foot but her ankle? His suspicions returned while he looked at
her blooming face, and he hoped earnestly that she would not feel
impelled to relate any irrelevant details of the adventure. Like Gideon
Vetch on the platform she seemed incapable of withholding the smallest
fragment of a fact; and the young man wondered if it were characteristic
either of "the plain people," as he called them, or of circus riders as
a class, that their minds should go habitually unclothed yet unashamed.

"Thank you, sir," said the Governor without effusion; and he asked: "Did
you hurt yourself, Patty?" while he bent over and laid his hand on her
ankle.

A note of tenderness passed into his voice as he turned to the girl; and
when she answered after a minute, Stephen recognized the same tone of
affectionate playfulness that she used when she spoke of him.

"Not much," she replied carelessly. Then she held out the drooping
pigeon. "I found this bird. Is there anything we can do for it?"