While this tempest was struggling to boil over into action, Carlotta appeared. She had never stayed long at Washington after the first winter; she preferred, for the children and perhaps for herself, the quiet and the greater simplicity of Fredonia. But--"I got to thinking about it," said she, "and it seemed to me a bad idea for a man to be separated so long from his wife and children--and home influences."
That last phrase was accompanied by one of her queer shrewd looks.
"Your idea is not without merit," replied I judicially.
"What are you smiling at?" she demanded sharply.
"If it was a smile," said I, "it was at myself."
"No, you were laughing at me. You think I am jealous."
She looked fixedly at me and finally said: "I want to tell you two things about myself and you. The first is that I am afraid of you."
"Yet you are always telling me I am cold."
She laughed shortly. "So is a stick of dynamite," said she.
It was through Carlotta that I came to know Burbank well.
He was in the House, representing the easternmost district of our state. I had disliked him when we were boys in the state assembly together, and, when I met him again in Washington, he seemed to me to have all his faults of fifteen years before aggravated by persistence in them. Finally, I needed his place in Congress for a useful lieutenant of Woodruff's and ordered him beaten for the renomination. He made a bitter fight against decapitation, and, as he was popular with the people of his district, we had some difficulty in defeating him. But when he was beaten, he was of course helpless and hopelessly discredited,--the people soon forget a fallen politician. He "took off his coat" and worked hard and well for the election of the man who had euchred him out of the nomination. When he returned to Washington to finish his term, he began a double, desperate assault upon my friendship. The direct assault was unsuccessful,--I understood it, and I was in no need of lieutenants. More than I could easily take care of were already striving to serve me, scores of the brightest, most ambitious young men of the state eager to do my bidding, whatever it might be, in the hope that in return I would "take care of" them, would admit them to the coveted inclosure round the plum tree. The plum tree! Is there any kind of fruit which gladdens the eyes of ambitious man, that does not glisten upon some one of its many boughs, heavy-laden with corporate and public honors and wealth?