“Impossible!” declared Branch.  “Margaret is a sensible girl and Josh has nothing—­never will have anything.”

“A mere politician!” declared Madam Bowker.  “Like hundreds of others that wink in with each administration and wink out with it.  He will not succeed even at his own miserable political game—­and, if he did, he would still be poor as poverty.”

“I don’t think you need worry about him and Margaret.  I repeat, she is sensible—­an admirable girl—­admirably brought up.  She has distinction.  She has the right instincts.”

Madam Bowker punctuated each of these compliments with a nod of her haughty head.  “But,” said she, “Craig has convinced her that he will amount to something.”

“Ridiculous!” scoffed Branch, with an airy wave of the hand.  But there was in his tone a concealment that set the shrewd old lady furtively to watching him.

“What do they think of him among the public men?” inquired she.

“He’s laughed at there as everywhere.”

Her vigilance was rewarded; as Branch said that, malignance hissed, ever so softly, in his suave voice, and the snake peered furtively from his calm, cold eyes.  Old Madam Bowker had not lived at Washington’s great green tables for the gamblers of ambition all those years without learning the significance of eyes and tone.  For one politician to speak thus venomously of another was sure sign that that other was of consequence; for John Branch, a very Machiavelli at self-concealment and usually too egotistic to be jealous, thus to speak, and that, without being able to conceal his venom—­“Can it be possible,” thought the old lady, “that this Craig is about to be a somebody?” Aloud she said:  “He is a preposterous creature.  The vilest manners I’ve seen in three generations of Washington life.  And what vanity, what assumptions!  The first time I met him he lectured me as if I were a schoolgirl —­lectured me about the idle, worthless life he said I lead.  I decided not to recognize him next time I saw him.  Up he came, and without noticing that I did not speak he poured out such insults that I was answering him before I realized it.”

“He certainly is a most exasperating person.”

“So Western!  The very worst the West ever sent us.  I don’t understand how he happened to get about among decent people.  Oh, I remember, it was Grant Arkwright who did it.  Grant picked him up on one of his shooting trips.”

“He is insufferable,” said Branch.

“You must see that the President gets rid of him.  I want it done at once.  I assure you, John, my alarm is not imaginary.  Margaret is very young, has a streak of sentimentality in her.  Besides, you know how weak the strongest women are before a determined assault.  If the other sex wasn’t brought up to have a purely imaginary fear of them I don’t know what would become of the world.”

Branch smiled appreciatively but absently.  “The same is true of men,” said he.  “The few who amount to anything—­at least in active life—­base their calculations on the timidity and folly of their fellows rather than upon their own abilities.  About Craig—­I’d like to oblige you, but—­well, you see, there is—­there are certain political exigencies—­”