"Swell!'" The youngster stuck out his hand. Blackford shook it. "My principal will be delighted, and I already am. This time, by thunder, we're going to lick 'em." He waved and departed.

"We're going to lick them," Blackford repeated. His smile was wide and amused. "Well, by thunder, maybe we are. What I'm afraid of is that tomorrow you're going to have to listen to nominating speeches telling the convention what a saint I am, and you'll laugh so loud, you'll get yourself thrown out of the hall."

"I would never do such a thing!" With a mischievous twinkle in her eye, Flora added, "Not right out loud, I wouldn't."

And, indeed, she sat beaming with pride as speaker after speaker stood up to praise Hosea Blackford the next day. A couple of other names were also placed in nomination, but Blackford won on the first ballot. Flora clapped till her hands were red and sore, and she was far from the only one who did.

But, even in the nominating convention, the would-be vice president yielded pride of place to the man heading the ticket. A runner went to summon Hosea Blackford (custom had forbidden him from being in the hall while the nomination proceedings went on). The chairman of the convention said, "And now, my friends"-no ladies and gentlemen, not in the Socialist camp-"I have the privilege of presenting to you the next president of the United States, Mr. Upton Sinclair of New Jersey!'"

More applause followed, louder and more prolonged than that which had announced Hosea Blackford's nomination. Sinclair bounded up to the platform. Both his stride and the white summer-weight suit he wore proclaimed his youthful energy: Flora couldn't remember whether he was forty-one or forty-two. Set against the sixtyish Roosevelt, he seemed boyish, bouncy, full of spit and vinegar.

He knew it, too. "My friends, it's time for a change!" he shouted in a great voice, and cheers went up like thunder. Sinclair held up his hands, asking for quiet. Eventually, he got it. "It's time for a change," he repeated. "It's time for a change in ideas, and it's time for a change in the people who give us our ideas, too." Flora, to whom even Sinclair was not all that young, clapped hard again.

"What this convention has done here in Toledo marks the first step in that great and necessary change," Sinclair said. "This convention has passed the torch to a new generation, a generation born since the War of Secession, tempered by our troubles, disciplined by the harsh peace our neighbors forced upon us, and eager for the freedom and justice and equality of which we have heard so much and seen so little. Tell me, my friends: are you willing to witness or permit the slowing of those freedoms to which this nation has always been committed?"

"No!" Flora shouted, along with everyone else in the hall.

"Neither am I! Neither is the Socialist Party!" Upton Sinclair cried. "And I also tell you this, my friends: if our free country cannot help the men who are poor, it surely cannot-and should not-save the few who are rich!" Every time Flora thought the next round of applause could be no louder than the last, she found herself mistaken. When silence returned, Sinclair went on, "Now that we have suffered so much in the struggle against our nation's foes, let us struggle instead against the common enemies of mankind: against oppression, against poverty, and against bloody-handed war itself!"

He went on in that vein for some time. It seemed more an inaugural address than an acceptance speech. No Socialist presidential candidate had ever spoken not only to the Party but also to the country with such easy confidence before. Upton Sinclair sounded as if he took it for granted that he might win. Because he took it for granted (or sounded as if he did), would not the rest of the country do the same?

And then, at last, he said, "And now, my friends, I have the pleasure and the honor of introducing to you the next vice president of the United States, Congressman Hosea Blackford of the great state of Dakota."

Blackford got more than polite applause. Flora's contribution was as raucous as she could make it. As the tumult died away, Blackford said, "I too am of the generation born after the War of Secession, if only just. And I am of the generation that learned of Socialism from its founders: in my case literally, for Abraham Lincoln pointed out to me the need for class justice and economic justice on a train trip through Montana-the Montana Territory, it was then-and Dakota."

Lincoln's name drew a nervous round of applause, as it always did: half pride in the role he'd played in making the Socialist Party strong, half fear of the contempt that still clung to him because he'd fought-and lost-the War of Secession. Flora hoped that, with victory in the Great War, the country would not dwell on the War of Secession so much as it had in earlier days.

"I stand foursquare behind Mr. Sinclair in his call for freedom and in his call for justice," Blackford said. "The Socialist Party, unlike every other party in the USA, is committed to economic freedom and economic justice for every citizen of the United States. Others may speak of a square deal, but how, my friends, how can there be a square deal for the millions of workers who cannot earn enough to buy a square meal?"

That won him solid cheers, in which Flora joined. Possessive pride filled her: that was her man up there, perhaps-no, probably, she thought, defying a generation and a half of Democratic tenure in the White House-the next vice president, as Upton Sinclair had said. Hard on the heels of pride came loneliness. If Blackford was to become the next vice president, he'd be crisscrossing the country between now and November 2. They wouldn't have many chances to see each other till the election.

More solid applause followed Blackford's speech: the sort, Flora thought, a vice-presidential candidate should get. Blackford had spoken ably, but hadn't upstaged Sinclair. "On to victory!' the chairman shouted, dismissing the delegates and formally bringing the convention to a close.

On the street outside the hall, a sandy-haired fellow in the overalls and cloth cap of a steelworker called Flora's name. "Yes? What is it?" she asked.

"I wanted to ask how your brother's getting along, ma'am," the man said. "I was his sergeant, the day he got hurt. Name's Chester Martin." He took off the cap and dipped his head.

"Oh!" Flora exclaimed. "He spoke well of you in his letters, always. You know he lost the leg?"

"I thought he would-I saw the wound," Martin answered. "Please say hello for me, next time you see him."

"I will," Flora answered. "He's doing as well as he could hope on the artificial leg. With it and a cane, he gets around fairly well. He's working, back in New York City."

"That's all good news, or as good as it can be," Martin said.

"He's a Democrat," Flora added, as if to say all the news wasn't good.

"I used to be, but I'm a Socialist now," Martin said. "It evens out. And I think, with Sinclair running, we may win the election this time, ma'am. I really do."

"So do I," Flora whispered-she didn't want to say it too loudly, for fear Something might hear and put a jinx on it. "So do I."

Anne Colleton gave her brother an annoyed look. "I still don't see exactly why you think I ought to meet this person."

"Because I remember very well the soldier who wrote to me about him," Tom Colleton replied. "If Bartlett says something is important, you can take it to the bank." He looked sheepish. "These days, as a matter of fact, Bartlett's word is a damn sight better than taking something to the bank."

"I think you want me to meet this Brearley because you're still trying to get me out of the Freedom Party," Anne said.

"If the big wheels in the Party aren't just the way you think they are, isn't that something you ought to know?" her brother returned.