“A superb pram-trundler,” suggested Arkwright.

“Precisely.  Be off now; I must work.  Be off, and exhibit that wonderful suit and those spotless white spats where they’ll be appreciated.”  And he dismissed the elegantly-dressed idler as a king might rid himself of a favorite who threatened to presume upon his master’s good humor and outstay his welcome.  But Arkwright didn’t greatly mind.  He was used to Josh’s airs.  Also, though he would not have confessed it to his inmost self, Josh’s preposterous assumptions, by sheer force of frequent and energetic reiteration, had made upon him an impression of possible validity —­not probable, but possible; and the possible was quite enough to stir deep down in Arkwright’s soul the all but universal deference before power.  It never occurred to him to suspect there might be design in Craig’s sweeping assertions and assumptions of superiority, that he might be shrewdly calculating that, underneath the ridicule those obstreperous vanities would create, there would gradually form and steadily grow a conviction of solid truth, a conviction that Joshua Craig was indeed the personage he professed to be—­mighty, inevitably prevailing, Napoleonic.

This latent feeling of Arkwright’s was, however, not strong enough to suppress his irritation when, a few days later, he went to the Severences for tea, and found Margaret and Josh alone in the garden, walking up and down, engaged in a conversation that was obviously intimate and absorbing.  When he appeared on the veranda Joshua greeted him with an eloquent smile of loving friendship.

“Ah, there you are now!” he cried.  “Well, little ones, I’ll leave you together.  I’ve wasted as much time as I can spare to-day to frivolity.”

“Yes, hurry back to work,” said Arkwright.  “The ship of state’s wobbling badly through your neglect.”

Craig laughed, looking at Margaret.  “Grant thinks that’s a jest,” said he.  “Instead, it’s the sober truth.  I am engaged in keeping my Chief in order, and in preventing the President from skulking from the policies he has the shrewdness to advocate but lacks the nerve to put into action.”

Margaret stood looking after him as he strode away.

“You mustn’t mind his insane vanity,” said Arkwright, vaguely uneasy at the expression of her hazel eyes, at once so dark, mysterious, melancholy, so light and frank and amused.

“I don’t,” said she in a tone that seemed to mean a great deal.

He, still more uneasy, went on:  “A little more experience of the world and Josh’ll come round all right—­get a sense of proportion.”

“But isn’t it true?” asked Margaret somewhat absently.

“What?”

“Why, what he said as he was leaving.  Before you came he’d been here quite a while, and most of the time he talked of himself—­”

Arkwright laughed, but Margaret only smiled, and that rather reluctantly.

“And he was telling how hard a time he was having; what with Stillwater’s corruption and the President’s timidity about really acting against rich, people—­something about criminal suits against what he calls the big thieves—­I didn’t understand it, or care much about it, but it gave me an impression of Mr. Craig’s power.”