"I think not," said Craig judicially. "She'd play hell with my
politics. It's bad enough to have fights on every hand and all the
time abroad. It'd be intolerable to have one at home--and I've got
no time to train her to my uses and purposes."

Usually Craig's placid conviction that the universe existed for
his special benefit and that anything therein was his for the mere
formality of claiming it moved Arkwright to tolerant amusement at
his lack of the sense of proportion and humor. Occasionally it
moved him to reluctant admiration--this when some apparently
absurd claim of his proved more or less valid. Just now, in the
matter of Margaret Severence, this universal overlordship filled
him with rage, the more furious that he realized he could no more
shake Josh's conviction than he could make the Washington monument
topple over into the Potomac by saying, "Be thou removed." He
might explain all the obvious reasons why Margaret would never
deign to condescend to him; Josh would dismiss them with a laugh
at Arkwright's folly.

He hid his rage as best he could, and said with some semblance of
genial sarcasm: "So all you've got to do is to ask her and she's
yours?"

Craig gave him a long, sharp, searching look. "Old man," he said
earnestly, "do you want her?"

"_I_!" exclaimed Arkwright angrily, but with shifting eyes and
with upper lip twitching guiltily. Then, satirically: "Oh, no; I'd
not dare aspire to any woman YOU had condescended to smile upon."