"I'm being very patient," she whispered and her lips quivered with a
smile as two tears jeweled her black lashes.
But David had made his last stand--he folded her in, locked his heart and
threw away the key.
"Love," he whispered after a long time, "I know this is just a
dream--I've had 'em for ten years--but don't let anybody wake me!"
To which plea Phoebe was making the tenderest of responses, when the door
burst open and Billy Bob shot into the room.
"Hip! hip!" he yelled at the top of his voice, "six hundred and ten
plurality and all from the two coon wards--count all in and verified--no
difference now how the others go and--" He paused and the situation
dawned upon him all in a heap as Phoebe hid her head against David's
collar. "Davie," he remarked in subdued tones, "you're 'lected, but I
don't s'pose you care!"
"Go away, Billy Bob, don't you see I'm busy?" answered David as he rose
to his feet, keeping Phoebe still embraced as she stood beside him.
"Jerusalem the Golden! Have you cornered heaven, David?" gasped Billy Bob
again rising to the surface. "Help, somebody, help!" At which exact
minute Mistake succeeded in dispossessing Crimie of the last tatters of
the adventures of the bears and thus bringing down upon them all a tumult
of distraction.
Billy Bob caught up the roarer and threw him almost up to the ceiling.
"Hurrah for Dave!" he said, and to the best of his ability Crimie
"hurrahed" while Mistake joined in enthusiastically. The hubbub at last
penetrated the slumbers of the twins, who added to the uproar to such an
extent that Mammy Betty hurried to the scene of action and cleared the
deck without further delay.
"And," continued Billy Bob to Milly and the pair of serene and only
slightly attentive young people, "you should have seen Jeff, dressed in
Dave's last year frock coat and high hat, whizzing around the coon haunts
in Caroline's gray car handing out invitations to the Chocolate Country
Club jamboree! They put the bottle and the dimes completely out of
business and he voted the whole gang straight. They tried hard to fix up
the returns but Hob and I were at the count and we saw it clean. Holy
smoke, what a sell for the machine! Slipped a cog on the nigger vote that
they have handled for years!"
"And not a dollar spent!" said David with pride. Which goes to show that
at times women keep their own counsels, for Phoebe ducked her head to
hide a smile.