Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1922)

that he could_use at the moment; a committee from The Onward and Upward Woman's Club, carrying suitably engrossed resolutions; Hon. Cyrus Blagdon, member of Congress, who was worried because he was afraid he did not look as important as he thought he ought to feel ; and hidden somewhere in the crowd, a French dignitary with a medal of the Legion of Honor concealed upon his person. And the band. All this was on the official, or station side of the track. Nobody noticed, and he took good care that nobody would notice, Cale Higginson hiding behind a pile of lumber the other side of the track, nursing two fishing poles and a can of bait. He had warned Dan by telegraph of what was likely to happen to him, and everything was arranged to circumvent the hero-worshippers. When the train came in, Dan slipped out of the back door and it took the town two hours to locate him. They did manage to pin the medal on him at last, but it was a tough job for fishing was good. THIS astonishing behaviour on the part of her hero almost made Katherine Fendle lose her religion. Having a good deal of fighting blood of her own, however, she just got good and mad instead. She had decided that Dan Bentley was going to be the leading citizen of Wingfield and the mere fact that he didn't seem to see it that way only made her more decided than ever. Just wait till she got her hands on him, she told herself — and she didn't have to wait long. The Oglesbys owned almost everything worth while around Wingfield, including the meadow where the grasshoppers grew longest and fattest, and everybody knows that a fish will swim a mile for a good grasshopper. So the Oglesby meadow was the favorite bait mine of Dan and Cale, and it happened quite naturally that one day in the pursuit of the nimble insect, Dan unintentionally brought himself into the disapproving presence of Miss Katherine. She spoke to him with some force and considerable point. The language was too high for Cale and he retreated in disorder. Miss Oglesby continued her oration at some length and temperature, making it quite clear just what she thought of a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor caught in the act of chasing grasshoppers, while the city of Wingfield was going to the everlasting bow-wows for want of a reformer. Dan didn't say much. She didn't leave much for him to say. But when she swung around with a contemptuous whisk of her skirt and left him flat among the grasshoppers, he began thinking, and he kept it up so long that he forgot to go fishing for a week. Then he unlimbered. One of the principal objections to building a fire under a balky horse is that you never can tell how much speed he is going to develop. Wingfield took it as a pleasing novelty when Dan started his campaign for playgrounds, and did not yawn much when he put through his plan to establish public rest rooms for women. But when he went ahead and urged a community center building, more parks clean streets, and such fol de rols, the old timers began to look upon him as a plain nuisance. The queer thing about it, though, was that such a lot of people fell in line with Dan's ideas that the city council had to carry out his schemes. Dan hadn't much more time for the law business than before, but he began to find reforming Wingfield almost as much fun as fishing. Besides, he saw a lot more of Katherine than he used to. She even retained him as her personal attorney, and it was astonishing how much legal advice Dan discovered a pretty girl really needs. He assured her that he thought she ought to have a certain amount of advice every day, and she didn't seem to object. None of all this escaped the watchful eye of Katherine's brother, Oglesby, but still he let things run along. He didn't care how clean Dan made Wingfield. He knew who was running the city, and how. Sam de Mott did not come to the Fendle home every day or so, just to drink Oglesby's old rye, though that was one reason. Sam had a line on all the politicians in the county, knew which ones could be bought, and for how much, and which ones would stay bought after you bought them. As Oglesby's interests were extensive, and his relations with several railway systems intricate and personal, de Mott's services were of great value to him. Now it so happened that about this time an election approached. The term of Congressman Blagdon was expiring, and after considering his record and his ability, if any, Oglesby Fendle and Sam de Mott decided that when his term expired it would be as well not to resurrect it. Blagdon, it was agreed over the Fendle highballs, would not stay put. Not because he was too honest, but because he was dishonest in so many directions at the same time that he stumbled over the wires that were being pulled to make him jump through, AT this point de Mott had an inspiration. He has since blamed the fact that he had one highball more than one should have when selecting a candidate. However that may be, he pointed out to Oglesby that the best way to be sure of electing their man, and having him where they wanted him when he had been elected, was to nominate Dan Bentley. Fendle was amused, but de Mott checked off the points in Dan's favor — war hero, head of the new reform movement in Wingfield, broke, and easy to handle through Oglesby's sister, upon whom, as de Mott expressed it so elegantly, Dan was "dead gone." The idea of going to Congress did not hit Dan Bentley very favorably. He had been to Washington and had seen Congress. But Katherine thought, it would be just the thing for him, and as she had been taking so much of his advice it seemed only fair that he should take a little of hers. So he acceded to the demands of his fellow citizens, carefully stimulated by Fendle and de Mott through the Courier. Thes; political engineers decided that the best way to insure Dan's election would be to let Bragdon get the nomination on his own party ticket, and then run Bentley as an independent, splitting the regular party lines neatly in the middle, and walking through the gap to "Don't be a fool," de Mott snapped. "You're broke^ you can't be elected without money" Sh