He must
have seen it in my face when he opened the door, for he took a
sidelong step, shading his eyes from the lamp to get a better look,
and held out his hand.
"Wish you joy, old man," he said heartily. "Tell us of it, will
you?" And I did.
It is true that all the world loves a lover. It smiled upon me all
day long, and I smiled back. Even the beats looked askance at me
no longer. The politicians who came offering to buy the influence
of my paper in the election were allowed to escape with their lives.
I wrote--I think I wrote to her every day. At least that is what I
do now when I go away from home. She laughs when she tells me that
in the first letter I spoke of coming home in a year. Meanwhile,
according to her wish, we were to say nothing about it. In the
second letter I decided upon the following spring. In the third I
spoke of perhaps going in the winter. The fourth and fifth preferred
the early winter. The sixth reached her from Hamburg, on the heels
of a telegram announcing that I had that day arrived in Frisia.
What had happened was that just at the right moment the politicians
had concluded, upon the evidence of the recent elections, that they
could not allow an independent paper in the ward, and had offered
to buy it outright.
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