Bisbee daily review., 1913-08-03
CHAPTER II.
The Girl and the Boy.


 The Hotel Keswtck telephone girl was a character. Even the politicians who made the big Washington cara, vansary their headquarters recognized that. Some of them had sought to un. bend from their labors at law building and law-sapping long enough to try to improve their casual acquaintance with her. But they had one and all aban. doned the effort
 Not that Miss Wanda Kelly was in the very least shy. No. she had 9 re. spoRsive word for everybody. Only sometimes that word had a queer way of soaring instead of fiattering
 "If Joan of Arc had been brought up in the alleys" once observed the Honorable Tim Neligan, and if she's been nursed on iron tonic and learned her alphabet from George Ade's fables she'd have been a dead ringer for Wan. da Kelly"
 To which the more or less Honor. able Jim Blake had made reply:
 Maybe that hello girl was all Wan da when she started out But kes- wick switchboard course has made her all Kelly. I don't know why no one reports her for being fresh Ex cept, maybe, that he'd have to tell what he said to her to bring out the fresh comeback"
 In any case, no one did report Wan da Kelly. There, in an alcove under the great gariEh stairway, she sat day after day manipulating her racks oi switches; To her left were the tele- phone booths; to her right the corri doE-where all the political world pass cd sSer in review Behind her--and Ihen voices chsnced to be raised in eagerness or dispute, in easy ear-shoi was a spot where far more history was made than in the Capitol itself
 This historic place was a deep niche known to local fame as the amen corner" It was of the beaten track of the corridor, ye. vantage-point whence every ytning was visible. Here Jim Blake-long. lean. saturnine mas ter of the machine-had a way of sit ting, his eternal cigar in one corner of his mouth, his slouch hat aslant on his head or under his chair And here like filings to the magnet. the men who gleaned in Jim's wake, and whose DO liticaI life hung on his curt nod, would cluster.
 One evening as the dinner crowd was drifting along the corridor toward the huge dining-rooms, Wanda noted that the amen corner hela but two men. Both of them she knew, and both were very evidently awaiting Jim Blake's return from the Capitol. More than one passer-by along the corridor nudged his companions and pointed out the elder Of the corners two occu. pants.
 Tho object of these surreptitious zlances was fne-looking. rather portly man of early middle age-the Honorable Mark Robertson, former governor of New York, present repre- sentative in congress from the same state and-equaIly important-Jim Blake's son-ln-law. Mofe-he was the man whom the machine. at it's masters orders had slated as next speaker of the house. Yes, and perhaps if all one heard were true, for a far higher office later on.
 Wanda Kelly knew this And, thanks to overheard scraps of amen-corner talk. she knew much more. She had often seen Robertson. Now and then she had received careless nod from him or from his stately young wife, Blake's only daughter. who so often while congress was in session ran down from the Robertson house in New York for a soiourn of 8 day or two with her husband and father al the capital.
 Yet Wanda wasted fewer thoughts just now on the celebrity than on the much younger man with whom he was talking. And perhaps her thoughts had telepathio power For, as Robert son strolled out into the foyer. his