"Don't let that worry you, darling. Mr. North has been contradicting
everybody in the Senate for twenty years. Your devoted Burleigh
quarrels with everybody but yourself. Mr. Maxwell snubs everybody who
presumes to disagree with him, and French is so superior that I long
for some naughty little boys to give him a coat of pink paint. Your
_salon_ will probably fight like cats. If the war cloud gets any
bigger, your mother will go to bed early on _salon_ nights and send
for a policeman. I look forward to it with an almost painful joy.
I want to go in to dinner with Mr. March, by the way. He is the
noblest-looking man in Congress--looks like what the statues of the
founders of the Republic would look like if they were decently done.
I'll paint the menu cards for you, and I'll wear a new gown I've just
paid ninety-three dollars duty on--I certainly shall tear out the eyes
of 'the honourable gentleman from Maine.'"




III



When Sally had gone, after an hour of consultation on the various
phases of the dinner, Betty sat for some moments striving to call up
something from the depths of her brain, something that had smitten it
disagreeably as it fell, but sunk too quickly, under a torrent of
words, to be analyzed at the moment. It had made an extremely
unpleasant impression;--painful perhaps would be a better word.

In the course of ten minutes she found the sentence which had made the