"Now look here, old lady," he said, "here's a chance to show your
mettle. If you'll manage Greenfield, I'll run the rest of the hayseed
crowd, and I'll make it something handsomer than you ever had in your
life."

The woman smiled a smile of greed and cunning.

"I'll take care of him," she said. "And he shall never know he has been
taken care of either."

Irons laughed with coarse jocoseness.

"A man has very little chance that falls into your clutches," he
observed, "but in this particular case you've got a heavy contract on
hand. Greenfield's got his price, of course, like everybody else, but
I'm hanged if I know what it is. If you offered him tin he'd simply fly
out on the whole thing and nobody could hold him. There isn't any
particular pull in politics on him. This new-fashioned independence has
knocked all that to pieces; and Greenfield is an Independent from the
word go. I don't know what you're to bait your hook with, unless it's
your lovely self."

Mrs. Sampson began a laugh, and then recovering herself, she frowned.

"Don't be personal," she said. "I won't stand it."

She began to feel that the circumstances were such as to make her
important to her caller's schemes, and her air by insensible degrees
became more assured and less subservient. She knew her man, and she was
prepared for his becoming proportionately more respectful. He dusted a