little heap of ashes from the small table beside him and scattered them
with his foot, in a well-meant attempt to cover the traces of his
previous untidiness. She watched him with a covert sneer.

"Even so difficult a problem as that," she said, with a slight toss of
the head, a bit of antique coquetry which impressed him with a new
sense of her thorough self-possession, and imposed itself upon his
untrained mind as the air of a true woman of the world; "I fancy I can
solve. Leave him to me. I'll find out what can be done with him."

"If he can be got hold of," Irons remarked, reflectively, "he will
carry the whole thing through. They'd believe him up at Feltonville if
he told them it was right to walk backward and vote to give their
incomes to the temperance cranks."

He rose to go as he spoke, unconsciously assuming with the overcoat he
put on that air of stiffness and immaculate propriety which he wore
always in public. He seldom allowed himself the undignified freedom
which marked his intercourse with Mrs. Sampson, and he liked the rest
he found in being for a time his vulgar, ill-bred self with no
restraints of artificial manner.

"Well, good afternoon," he said, extending his large hand, into which
she laid hers with a certain faint air of condescension. "I've got to
go to a meeting of the committee on the new statue. They've got a new
fellow they are trying to push in, a young unlicked cub that Peter
Calvin's running. I'll let you know anything that's for our advantage."

When he was gone, Mrs. Sampson produced a brush and a dustpan from
behind the books on a whatnot and carefully collected the scattered