“I wish you were here,” she wrote to my wife.  “I am sure you would enjoy it.  There are so many distinguished people and brilliant people—­though the distinguished are not always brilliant nor the brilliant distinguished—­and everybody is so kind and hospitable, and Rodney is such a favorite.  We go everywhere, literally, and all the time.  You must not scold, but I haven’t opened a book, except my prayerbook, in six weeks—­it is such a whirl.  And it is so amusing.  I didn’t know there were so many kinds of people and so many sorts of provincialism in the world.  The other night, at the British Minister’s, a French attache, who complimented my awful French—­I told him that I inherited all but the vocabulary and the accent—­said that if specimens of the different kinds of women evolved in all out-of-the-way places who come to Washington could be exhibited, nobody would doubt any more that America is an interesting country.  Wasn’t it an impudent speech?  I tried to tell him, in French, how grateful American women are for any little attention from foreigners who have centuries of politeness behind them.  Ah me!  I sometimes long for one of the old-fashioned talks before your smoldering logs!  What we talk about here, Heaven only knows.  I sometimes tell Rodney at night—­it is usually morning—­that I feel like an extinct piece of fireworks.  But next day it is all delightful again; and, dear friend, I don’t know but that I like being fireworks.”

Among the men who came oftenest to see Henderson was Jerry Hollowell.  It seemed to Margaret an odd sort of companionship; it could not be any similarity of tastes that drew them together, and she could not understand the nature of the business transacted in their mysterious conferences.  Social life had few attractions for Hollowell, for his family were in the West; he appeared to have no relations with any branch of government; he wanted no office, though his influence was much sought by those who did want it.

“You spend a good deal of time here, Mr. Hollowell,” Margaret said one day when he called in Henderson’s absence.

“Yes, ma’am, considerable.  Things need a good deal of fixing up.  Washington is a curious place.  It’s a sort of exchange for the whole country:  you can see everybody here, and it is a good place to arrange matters.”

“With Congress, do you mean?” Margaret had heard much of the corruption of Congress.

“No, not Congress particularly.  Congressmen are just about like other people.  It’s all nonsense, this talk about buying Congressmen.  You cannot buy them any more than you can buy other people, but you can sort of work together with some of them.  We don’t want anything of Congress, except to be let alone.  If we are doing something to develop the trade in the Southwest, build it up, some member who thinks he is smart will just as likely as not try to put in a block somewhere, or investigate, or something, in order to show his independence, and