“It’s my wife,” said Craig.  “Now take this message and get it off at once.  You should thank me for not having you dismissed.”

The operator read the message.  His face changed and he said in a surlily apologetic manner:  “I’ll send it off right away, Mr. Craig.  Anything else?”

“That’s all, my friend,” said Josh.  He returned to his wife’s side.  She was all confusion and doubt again.  Here they were back in civilization, and her man of the woods was straightway running amuck.  What should she do?  What could she do?  What had she got herself into by marrying?

But he was speaking.  “My dear,” he was saying in his sharp, insistent voice, that at once aroused and enfeebled the nerves, “I must talk fast, as the train comes in fifteen or twenty minutes—­ the train for Chicago—­for Minneapolis—­for Wayne—­for home—­our home.”

She started up from the seat, pale, quivering, her hands clinched against her bosom.

“For home,” he repeated, fixing her with his resolute, green-blue eyes.  “Please, sit down.”

She sank to the seat.  “Do you mean—­” she began, but her faltering voice could not go on.

“I’ve resigned from office,” said he, swift and calm.  “I’ve told the President I’ll not take the Attorney-Generalship.  I’ve telegraphed your people at Lenox that we’re not coming.  And I’m going home to run for Governor.  My telegrams assure me the nomination, and, with the hold I’ve got on the people, that means election, sure pop.  I make my first speech day after to-morrow afternoon—­with you on the platform beside me.”

“You are mistaken,” she said in a cold, hard voice.  “You—­”

“Now don’t speak till you’ve thought, and don’t think till I finish.  As you yourself said, Washington’s no place for us—­at present.  Anyhow, the way to get there right is to be sent there from the people—­by the people.  You are the wife of a public man, but you’ve had no training.”

“I—­” she began.

“Hear me first,” he said, between entreaty and command.  “You think I’m the one that’s got it all to learn.  Think again.  The little tiddledywinks business that I’ve got to learn—­all the value there is in the mass of balderdash about manners and dress—­I can learn it in a few lessons.  You can teach it to me in no time.  But what you’ve got to learn—­how to be a wife, how to live on a modest income, how to take care of me, and help me in my career, how to be a woman instead of, largely, a dressmaker’s or a dancing-master’s expression for lady-likeness—­to learn all that is going to take time.  And we must begin at once; for, as I told you, the house is afire.”

She opened her lips to speak.