Senator North | Page 4

"You are your father all over again! I've
seen it developing for at least three years. At first you were just a hard
student, and then the loveliest young girl, only caring to have a good
time, and coquetting more bewitchingly than any girl I ever saw. I don't
see why you had to change."
"Time develops all of us, one way or another. I suppose you would like
me to be a charming girl flirting bewitchingly when I am forty-five. I
am finished with the meaningless things of life. I want to live now, and
I intend to."
"It will be wildly exciting--the Senate Gallery every day, and knowing
a lot of lank raw-boned Yankees with political beards." "I am not
expecting to fall in love with any of them. I merely discovered some
time since that I had a brain, and they happen to be the impulse that
possesses it. You always have prided yourself that I am intellectual,
and so I am in the flabby 'well-read' fashion. I feel as if my brain had
been a mausoleum for skeletons and mummies; it felt alive for the first
time when I began to read the newspapers in England. I want no more
memoirs and letters and biographies, nor even of the history that is shut
up in calf-skin. I want the life of to-day. I want to feel in the midst of
current history. All these men here in Washington must be alive to their
finger-tips. Sally Carter admires Senator North and Senator Maxwell
immensely."
"What does she say about politicians in general?" Mrs. Madison looked
almost distraught. "Of course the Norths and the Maxwells come of

good New England families--I never did look down on the North as
much as some of us did; after all, nearly three hundred years are very
respectable indeed--and if these two men had not been in politics I
should have been delighted to receive them. I met Senator North once--
at Bar Harbor, while you were with the Carters at Homburg--and
thought him charming; and I had some most interesting chats with his
wife, who is much the same sort of invalid that I am. But when I
establish a standard I am consistent enough to want to keep to it. I
asked you what Sally Carter says of the others."
"Oh, she admits that there may be others as convenable as Senator
North and Senator Maxwell, and that there is no doubt about there
being many bright men in the Senate; but she 'does not care to know
any more people.' Being a good cave-dweller, she is true to her
traditions."
"People will say you are passee," exclaimed Mrs. Madison, hopefully.
"They will be sure to."
Her daughter laughed, showing teeth as brilliant as her eyes. Then she
snatched off her riding-hat and shook down her mane of warm brown
hair. Her black brows and lashes, like her eyes and mouth, were vivid,
but her hair and complexion were soft, without lustre, but very warm.
She looked like a flower set on so strongly sapped a stem that her
fullness would outlast many women's decline. She had inherited the
beauty of her father's branch of the family. Mrs. Madison was very
small and thin; but she carried herself erectly and her delicately cut face
was little wrinkled. Her eyes were blue, and her hair, which was always
carefully rolled, was as white as sea foam. Betty would not permit her
to wear black, but dressed her in delicate colours, and she looked
somewhat like an animated miniature. She dabbed impatiently at her
tears.
"Everybody will cut you--if you go into that dreadful political set."
"I am on the verge of cutting everybody myself, so it doesn't matter.
Positively--I shall not accept an invitation of the old sort this winter.
The sooner they drop me the better."

Mrs. Madison wept bitterly. "You will become a notorious woman,"
she sobbed. "People will talk terribly about you. They will say--all sorts
of things I have heard come back to me--these politicians make love to
every pretty woman they meet. They are so tired of their old frumps
from Oshkosh and Kalamazoo." "They do not all come from Oshkosh
and Kalamazoo. There are six New England States whose three
centuries you have just admitted lift them into the mists of antiquity.
There are fourteen Southern States, and I need make no defence--"
"Their gentlemen don't go into politics any more."
"You have admitted that Senator North and Senator Maxwell are
gentlemen. There is no reason why there should not be many more."
"Count de Bellairs told me that there was a spittoon at every desk in the
Senate and that he counted eight toothpicks in one hour."
"Well, I'll reform them. That will be my holy