The appointments of her "office" were plain and substantial. A
flat-topped desk stood in the middle of the room--a relic of the
lamented Jackson Owen; in one corner was an old-fashioned iron safe in
which she kept her account books. A print of Maud S. adorned one wall,
and facing it across the room hung a lithograph of Thomas A. Hendricks.
Twice a week a young woman came to assist Mrs. Owen with her
correspondence and accounts,--a concession to age, for until she was
well along in the fifties Sally Owen had managed these things alone.
"You've seen my picture-gallery before, Andrew? Small but select. I knew
both the lady and the gentleman," she continued, with one of her
humorous flashes. "I went to Cleveland in '85 to see Maud S. She ate up
a mile in 2:08-3/4--the prettiest thing I ever saw. You know Bonner
bought her as a four-year-old--the same Bonner that owned the 'New York
Ledger.' I used to read the 'Ledger' clear through, when Henry Ward
Beecher and Fanny Fern wrote for it. None of these new magazines touch
it. And you knew Tom Hendricks? That's a good picture. Tom looked like a
statesman anyhow, and that's more than most of 'em do."
She continued her efforts to divert his thoughts from the real matter at
hand, summoning from the shadows all the Hoosier statesmen of the
post-bellum period to aid her, and she purposely declared her admiration
of several of these to provoke Kelton's ire.
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