Part 21 (1/2)
”That's right! That's right!” exclaimed Mrs Whitson, a tender and dreamy sentimentalist except in her own affairs ”Love is best!”
”Love is best,” echoed Margaret
CHAPTER XIII
A MEMORABLE MEETING
In that administration the man ”next” the President was his Secretary of the Treasury, John Branch, cold and sray soul, an icy passion for power more relentless than heat ever bred To speak of hi moral quality to a reptile For him principle did not exist, except as an eccentricity of soht be used to keep them down Life presented itself to him as a series of mathematical problems, as an examination in mathematics To pass it meant a diplorace of obscurity
Cheating was perht at it Otherwise Branch was the estion being good, his income sufficient, his dorowing apace? No one respected him, no one liked hi quite unhampered of the restraints of conscience In person he was rather handso well concealed by fat and by judicious arrangements of mustache and side-whiskers By profession he was a lawyer, and had been most successful as adviser to wholesale thieves on depredations bent or in search of immunity for depredations done It was incomprehensible to him why he was unpopular with the masses It irritated him that they could not appreciate his purely abstract point of view on life; it irritated him because his unpopularity with them meant that there were limits, and very narrow ones, to his ambition
It was to John Branch that Mada ton She sent for him, and he came promptly He liked to talk to her because she was one of the feho thoroughly appreciated and sympathized with his ideas of success in life Also, he respected her as a personage in Washi+ngton, and had it in h, to one of her grandnephews
”Branch,” said the old lady, with an e ton”
”Josh, the joke?” said Branch with a slow, sneering s in one so even as he
”That's theattention to Margaret, and she is encouraging hiaret is a sensible girl and Josh has nothing--never will have anything”
”A mere politician!” declared Madam Bowker ”Like hundreds of others that wink in with each administration and wink out with it He will not succeed even at his own ame--and, if he did, he would still be poor as poverty”
”I don't think you need worry about hiirl--adht instincts”
Madam Bowker punctuated each of these cohty head ”But,” said she, ”Craig has convinced her that he will a”
”Ridiculous!” scoffed Branch, with an airy wave of the hand But there was in his tone a conceal hi the public hed at there as everywhere”
Her vigilance was rewarded; as Branch said that, nance hissed, ever so softly, in his suave voice, and the snake peered furtively from his calton's great green tables for the ganificance of eyes and tone For one politician to speak thus venon that that other was of consequence; for John Branch, a very Machiavelli at self-concealotistic to be jealous, thus to speak, and that, without being able to conceal his venoht the old lady, ”that this Craig is about to be a somebody?” Aloud she said: ”He is a preposterous creature The vilest ton life And what vanity, what assumptions! The first tiirl--lectured me about the idle, worthless life he said I lead I decided not to recognize hi that I did not speak he poured out such insults that I was answering him before I realized it”
”He certainly is aperson”
”So Western! The very worst the West ever sent us I don't understand how he happened to get about aht who did it Grant picked hi trips”
”He is insufferable,” said Branch
”You ets rid of him I want it done at once I assure you, John, , has a streak of sentiest women are before a deterht up to have a purely iinary fear of them I don't knoould become of the world”
Branch smiled appreciatively but absently ”The same is true of --at least in active life--base their calculations on the timidity and folly of their fellows rather than upon their own abilities About Craig--I'd like to oblige you, but--well, you see, there is--there are certain political exigencies--”