baseball player and street-car conductor should aspire to become mayor
of Warwick. An orator? Nonsense! Just a paltry gift of the gab.
Balaam's is n't the only ass whose mouth the Lord in his inscrutable
wisdom has seen fit to open."

Leigh suddenly awoke to the fact that a situation had developed during
his absorption, and that both men were looking at Miss Wycliffe, the
bishop defiantly, Cardington with an odd expression of concern. That
she was affected by her father's announcement and manner was evidenced
in the gleam of cold resentment with which she met his look, but in a
moment the light was gone, leaving her eyes as mysterious as a deep
pool in the woods at twilight.

"Now, bishop," Cardington protested, "I was merely trying to express
the fact that there is a certain facility in this young Emmet's
utterances which belongs to his nation. Perhaps we ought to appreciate
our opportunity to watch here in Warwick the development of a second
Edmund Burke."

It was Miss Wycliffe herself who gave Leigh the clue, and so apparently
spontaneous was her amusement as she turned to him that he began to
doubt his first impression of a far different emotion.

"This house is divided against itself," she explained, "into two
political camps. I must try to convert you to my Democratic point of
view, for just at present I am outnumbered two to one."

"Not two to one," Cardington objected. "Say rather that the forces are
drawn up in the proportion of one and a half to one and a half. I
stand in the ambiguous position of the peacemaker, inclining now this