Did they give it to me?  Why, child, they raised it twenty thousand dollars!  I had to hold ’em down.  Then Morton Bassett pulled it through the senate for me.  I told him if he didn’t I’d cut his acquaintance.”

“There’s Ed Thatcher, too, if we’re restricted to the Democratic camp,” the minister was saying.  “Thatcher has a fortune to use if he ever wants to try for something big in politics, which doesn’t seem likely.”

“He has a family that can spend his money,” said Mrs. Martin.  “What would he want with an office anyway?  The governorship would bore him to death.”

“It might tickle him to go to the senate, particularly if he had a score to clean up in connection with it,” remarked Ware.

“Just what do you mean by that?” asked the admiral.

“Well,” Ware replied, “he and Bassett are as thick as thieves just now in business operations.  If some day it came about that they didn’t get on so well,—­if Bassett tried to drop him as they say he has sometimes dropped men when he didn’t have any more use for them,—­then Thatcher’s sporting blood might assert itself.  I should be sorry for Bassett if that time came.”

“Edward Thatcher knows a horse,” interposed Mrs. Owen.  “I like Edward Thatcher.”

“I’ve fished with Bassett,” said the minister.  “A good fisherman ought to make a good politician; there’s a lot, I guess, in knowing just how to bait the hook, or where to drop the fly, and how to play your fish.  And Bassett is a man of surprising tastes.  He’s a book collector,—­rare editions and fine bindings and that sort of thing.”

“Is it possible!  The newspapers that abuse him never mention those things, of course,” said Mrs. Martin.

A brief restraint fell upon the company, as they realized suddenly that they were discussing the husband of their hostess’s niece, whom the opposition press declared to be the most vicious character that had ever appeared in the public life of the state.  The minister had spoken well of him; the others did not know him, or spoke cautiously; and Mrs. Owen herself seemed, during Ware’s last speech, to be a trifle restless.  She addressed some irrelevant remark to the admiral as they rose and adjourned to the long side veranda where the men lighted cigars.

“I think I like this corner best,” remarked Ware when the others had disposed themselves.  “Miss Sylvia, won’t you sit by me?” She watched his face as the match flamed to his cigar.  It was deep-lined and rugged, with high cheek bones, that showed plainly when he shut his jaws.  It occurred to Sylvia that but for his mustache his face would have been almost typically Indian.  She had seen somewhere a photograph of a Sioux chief whose austere countenance was very like the minister’s.  Ware did not fit into any of her preconceived ideas of the clerical office.  Dr. Wandless, the retired president of Madison College, was a minister, and any one would have known it, for the fact was proclaimed