The town had been attractive, but now it sprung into endearment. Emotion was strong within me and my spirits rose, to find a new interest in everything and to pick up many a jest by the roadside. I caught the song of an old man who stood near the turnpike, trimming a young orchard; and the laughter of a child that was romping on the grass when we stopped at a toll gate threw sparkles of new life in the air. One sweet thrill of selfishness had made the whole world musical and glad.

"Senator, whose house is that over yonder, to the left?"

"Mine," he answered. "Oh, yes, this is the first time you've had an opportunity to view it from a distance. We are out too far to have the advantage of gas and city water, but we've got room to swing round in, and that's worth everything. Lumber dealer came one day and wanted to know what I'd take for those walnuts. I told him that I'd take human life if it was necessary. Hang me, if I didn't feel like setting the dogs on him. I do believe," he said, shading his eyes, "that yonder are Estell and Florence. Yes, Sir, he's got home."

At the gate, beneath the walnut trees, a man and a woman stood looking toward us. The woman was Mrs. Estell. I had recognized her before the Senator directed my attention; I should have known her a mile away. Her gracefulness was so original that she must have been unconscious of its effect. The soft climate of the South had touched her with its ease, but she seemed ever on the verge of breaking away from it; and sometimes she did, not with mere gayety, but with unconquerable strength. She enforced upon me the belief that she had taken fencing lessons.

"And suppose he should object to our compact?" was a surmise that passed through my mind; and I did not realize that I had given it actual utterance until the Senator surprised me by saying:

"None of his business. Our affair. Taking care of the funds of the State gives him about all he can look after. Helloa, there, Estell, why don't you come out to meet a fellow?"

"On the keen jump, now," Estell replied, coming slowly to meet us, his wife walking with him. It might have been the eye of prejudice that made him look so old, though why should there have been an eye of prejudice? His mustache was cropped off, stiff and gray, and his skin was thin on his cheeks and thick under his chin. The Senator introduced us, with heartiness and a flourish, and the moment I took Estell's hand I knew that from his lofty position among the money bags of the State he could not look down and find an interest in me. His nature was financial, his instincts commercial; and I can say with truth that commerce embodied in a strong and aggressive personality has always made me shudder. I am afraid of the man who delights to make figures; I feel that I am in his power. I might not hesitate to dispute with a most learned theologian, to hang with him upon the quirks of his creed, but with a pencil and a piece of paper a banker's clerk can cower me.

The Senator assisted me to alight, the Treasurer lending a pretense of his aid; and we went without delay to the dining-room where dinner was waiting. The Estells sat opposite the Senator and me; and the master of the house and his son-in-law began to talk over the affairs of State.

"Hope you had a pleasant drive," Mrs. Estell said to me.

"Charming; we had a fine view of the town, saw the old fort, and passed your college."

"Stupid old place, isn't it? But then, it's dear, just like stupid people. Did you ever notice how dear stupid people are? They are sometimes our dearest ones. I suppose they feel that about the only thing they can do is to make themselves dear."

Estell was saying something about $246,-724, or something that sounded like that amount, but he dropped it to ask: "Florence, what are you talking about?"

"Stupid people. But you are not interested."

"No, of course not, but I was trying to get at an exact amount, and you bothered me for a moment."

"It's all right, let it go," said the Senator. "By the way, Mr. Belford and I have entered into a business arrangement. We are going to run the opera house and share profits."

Mrs. Estell cried "good." Estell gave her a look of reproof, I thought. "You mean that you are going to share losses," he said. "The thing was an elephant on Sanderson's hands."

"But it won't be on ours," the Senator spoke up. "We know how to run it. Don't we, Belford?"

"I think we do," I answered. "My fellow-players called me the manager's elephant, and in this case I don't know but we might be pitting Greek against Greek, or elephant against elephant."

Mrs. Estell laughed and so did the Senator, but Estell drank his coffee in silence. The subject was permitted to fall, but it was taken up again shortly afterward, when we had lighted our cigars in the library.

"So you think of going into the show business?" said the State Treasurer, resting his head on the back of his chair and looking up at the ceiling.

"Well, not actively," the Senator replied. "That is, I'm not to be active in the work."

"Oh, I suppose it's all right," admitted Estell; "but it's a new line and new lines are dangerous."

"But if dangerous, not without interest," the Senator was quick to retort. "It's settled, at any rate. I'm going to try it."

Mrs. Estell had not accompanied us. I heard her talking to a dog in the hall, and I listened with pleasure, for her voice was strong, deep and singularly musical.

"The next session of the Legislature will be a very busy one, I am inclined to think," Estell remarked.

"Always is," the Senator replied, laughing. "The better part of a new session is generally taken up with the work of repealing the laws passed by an older Assembly."

I was wondering whether Estell would ever become deeply enough interested in my existence to warrant a straight look from his pale and abstracted eye, when he withdrew his gaze from the ceiling, directed it at me and said that he was glad to see me so far advanced toward recovery. It was a mere commonplace which may not have arisen from a real interest, and which politeness could no longer defer, but it gave me a better opinion of him.

"I suppose," said I, not knowing what else to say, "that you find your occupation one of almost painful exactness."

I think that he gave me a look of contempt. I am quite sure that, if he did not, his eye failed him of his intention.

"I wouldn't stay there ten minutes if it meant play," he replied, and turning to the Senator he said: "Saw old Dan Hilliard the other day."

"No!" the Senator exclaimed. "You don't mean old Dan Hilliard?"

"Yes, I do—old Dan Hilliard."

"Hanged if I didn't think he was dead. Well, I'll swear! Old Dan Hilliard! Humph! Why, I met his wife one day about three years ago and she told me that Dan was dying, that he couldn't live till night. Now what do you suppose he wanted to get well for?"

"To distress his friends, I reckon. Wanted to get five dollars from me, and said if I'd give him the money you would pay him back."

My eyes with wandering about the room alighted on two foils, crossed above a bookcase. I was right. The young woman had taken fencing lessons. And just at that moment she entered the room, a great dog following her. At the door she turned about to drive him back. He tried to spring by her; she caught him, lifted him from the floor and with a swing she tumbled him out into the hall.

"What are you doing?" the Treasurer cried, with a nervous jump; and the Senator, who sat facing the door, fell back with a laugh so full of contagion that I caught it before I had time to strengthen my gravity with the reflection that I might give Estell a cause to think that I was intruding myself into a family affair.

"I am teaching old Tiger to behave himself," she replied, with a smile.

"I thought you had knocked down a steer," said Estell, settling himself in his rocking chair. He shut his eyes, and to me he looked like a man who longed for rest, but who had almost despaired of finding it. "Florence," he spoke up, opening his eyes and slightly turning his head toward her, "see if you can find my slippers, please. You needn't go yourself," he added. "Send for them."

"I don't know where they are, and nobody else can find them," she replied; and hastening out, she ran up the stairs, humming an undefinable tune.

"Tom," said the Senator, "you have about worn yourself out. Why don't you go off somewhere?"

"Can't—haven't time."

"That's the biggest fallacy that man ever introduced as an economy. Did you ever know a man too busy to die?"

"No, but I sometimes think I am."

"Why don't you give up the infernal office? Nothing in it, anyway."

"Why don't you give up your infernal office?"

"What!" cried the Senator, and he began to run his fingers through his beard. "Now that would be a devil of a come off, wouldn't it! How is a State to get along without laws? Hah! Look at the measures that owe their origin to me. Tom, it's all right to be tired, but it's dangerous to trample on common sense. Why don't I give up my office, indeed! Now what could have put that fool notion into your head? Have you heard anybody say that I ought to give it up? If you have, out with it, and I'll make him produce his cause or eat his words. Out with it."

"Oh, I don't know that I've heard anybody say that you ought to give it up," Estell replied, opening his eyes, but closing them again before he had completed the sentence.

"You don't know that you have," the Senator retorted, twisting his beard to a sharp and fierce-looking point. "Estell, old fellow, there are times for joking, but this is not one of them. I make no objection to fair and honorable criticism, Sir; you know that. I grant every man the right to pass upon my acts in office—in office, understand; but when a man says I ought to resign, why he must show cause, or I'll stuff him like a sausage with his own garrulity. That's me, Estell, and you know it."

"Talcom, I reckon that's you. But now to be exact, I haven't heard anybody say you ought not to be in office."

"Good enough, Tom. It's all right. Yes, Sir, it's all right," said the Statesman, with no trace of his recent disquiet, but with pleasant, kindly eyes and a countenance made smooth by the justice of his cause and the pride with which he regarded his determination to defend his good name. "But, Tom, you really need rest. Oh, of course, I don't mean that you should give up public life. No, Sir," he went on, looking at me, "when a man has once been a servant of the people, he is never satisfied to fall back among the powerless 'masters.' And, Sir—of course it wouldn't do to say it everywhere, but I will say it here in confidence—I have often looked at some poor, obscure devil and have said to myself, 'Why the deuce do you want to live? You can't possibly enjoy yourself, for nobody pays any attention to you.'"

And then spoke a voice at the door. I looked around and there Mrs. Estell stood, holding a slipper in each hand, her arms hanging limp. I did not catch the words she uttered first, but these I heard and always shall remember: "And perhaps he has a wife who worships him, and children that think he's a god. And if I were a man I would rather be in his place than to have a world of flattery."

With a swift step and a graceful bend she laid the slippers at her husband's feet. The Senator clapped his hands and so did I, but Estell neither moved nor opened his eyes until he heard the slippers tap upon the floor, and then he turned his head to say, "I'm much obliged to you."

And at that moment she broke away from the soft and dignifying influences of a Southern atmosphere; she sprang upon a chair, snatched the foils from the wall, laid one of them across my knees, sprang back and with mock tragedy cried, "Defend yourself." But before I could get out of my astonishment to say a word, and as the dull eyes of her husband looked up sharp with surprise, she bowed with a condescending grace and with mimic magnanimity threw down the foil and said: "Ah, I forgot. You are wounded and a prisoner."

The Senator looked on with pride; his face glowed and his eyes snapped, but Estell grunted: "Mr. er-er-Belford," he began, again becoming vaguely conscious that I was on the face of the earth, "the Senator had no son; and that explains why he made a tomboy of his daughter." He laughed weakly as he said this, and as a piece of good humor it was a failure, but it proved to me that he was not wholly ill-natured.

"That's all right," the Senator replied, with his eyes on Mrs. Estell, who had again mounted a chair to replace the foils on the wall. "That's all right, but her tomboyishness has made her decidedly human, and, Sir," he added, as the young woman stepped down, "I guess she succeeded in winning the love of one of the best men in the State. Eh. How's that, old fellow?"

"Not quite so bad as I expected," Estell answered, rousing up. "You could have studied longer and framed it worse. By the way, Mr. Belmont—"

"Belford," his wife suggested, standing with her hands resting on the back of his chair.

"Yes, thank you. But, by the way, Mr. Belford, where are you from, Sir? I take it that you are not a Southern man."

"I was born near the old city of Chester, England," I answered. "But I came to this country when a boy. And among Americans I sometimes assert that I'm English, but among Englishmen I am often proud to say that I am an American."

"Good enough," said the Senator. "First rate. That's all you need to say around here, Sir. Our most famous orator, S. S. Prentiss, used to say, when reproached with the fact that he was not born in Mississippi, that any fool could have been born here, but that he had sense enough to come to the State of his own accord. Belford, we've had some great orators. We've had men, Sir, that could make you laugh at your own sorrow and then compel you to look with grief upon your own laughter. But they are gone, Sir." He got up and stood with one hand thrust into his bosom. "They are gone, and the world will never look upon their like again. Why, Sir, Prentiss, with his oration on starving Ireland, made the whole world weep. Ah, and who makes it weep now? It does not weep, for there is a measure of relief in tears. It groans, and in a groan there is no sentiment—the groan is the language of despair. The oppressive corporation, the heartless money grabber—but I won't talk about it," he broke off, sitting down and running his fingers through his beard.

"Yes, it's bad," Estell drawled, "but what are we going to do about it, heigho?" he yawned. "You people may discuss the ills of the world, but I'm going up-stairs and take a nap."