"I see you are afraid I am going to marry an Oriental minister or
something. I hear that one is looking for an American with a million.
Well, I am going to do something you will think even worse. I am going
in for politics."

"You are going to do what?" Mrs. Madison's voice was nearly inaudible
between relief and horrified surprise, but her eyes flew open. "Do you
mean that you are going to vote?--or run for Congress?--but women
don't sit in Congress, do they?"

"Of course not. Do you know I think it quite shocking that we have
lived here in the very brain of the United States all our lives and
know less of politics than if we were Indians in Alaska? I was ashamed
of myself, I can assure you, when Lord Barnstaple asked me so many
questions the first time I visited Maundrell Abbey. He took for
granted, as I lived in Washington, I must be thoroughly well up in
politics, and I was obliged to tell him that although I had
occasionally been in the room with one or two Senators and Cabinet
Ministers, who happened to be in Society first and politics afterward,
I didn't know the others by name, had never put my foot in the White
House or the Capitol, and that no one I knew ever thought of talking
politics. He asked me what I had done with myself during all the
winters I had spent in Washington, and I told him that I had had the
usual girls'-good-time,--teas, theatre, Germans, dinners, luncheons,
calls, calls, calls! I was glad to add that I belonged to several
charities and had read a great deal; but that did not seem to interest
him. Well, I met a good many men like Lord Barnstaple, men who were in
public life. Some of them were dull enough, judged by the feminine
standard, but even they occasionally said something to remember, and