"This political game looks mighty queer to me," the admiral remarked. "I've never voted in my life, but I guess I'll try it now they've put me on the shelf. Do you vote, Mr. Ware?" "Oh, yes! I'm one of these sentimentalists who tries to vote for the best man. Naturally no man I ever vote for is elected." "If I voted I should want to see the man first," Mrs. Owen averred. "I should ask him how much he expected to make out of the job." "You'd be a tartar in politics, Sally," said the admiral. "The Governor told me the other day that when he hears that you're coming to the State House to talk about the Woman's Reformatory,--or whatever it is you're trustee of,--he crawls under the table. He says they were going to cut down the Reformatory's appropriation last winter, but that you went to the legislature and gave an example of lobbying that made the tough old railroad campaigners green with envy." "I reckon I did! I told the members of that committee that if they cut that appropriation I'd go into their counties and spend every cent I've got fighting 'em if they ever ran for office again. Joshua, fill the glasses." Sylvia was anxious to know the rest of the story. "I hope they gave you the money, Mrs. Owen," she said. Did they give it to me? Why, child, they raised it twenty thousand dollars! I had to hold 'em down. Then Morton Bassett pulled it through the senate for me. I told him if he didn't I'd cut his acquaintance." "There's Ed Thatcher, too, if we're restricted to the Democratic camp," the minister was saying. "Thatcher has a fortune to use if he ever wants to try for something big in politics, which doesn't seem likely." "He has a family that can spend his money," said Mrs. Martin. "What would he want with an office anyway? The governorship would bore him to death." "It might tickle him to go to the senate, particularly if he had a score to clean up in connection with it," remarked Ware. "Just what do you mean by that?" asked the admiral. "Well," Ware replied, "he and Bassett are as thick as thieves just now in business operations. If some day it came about that they didn't get on so well,--if Bassett tried to drop him as they say he has sometimes dropped men when he didn't have any more use for them,--then Thatcher's sporting blood might assert itself. I should be sorry for Bassett if that time came." "Edward Thatcher knows a horse," interposed Mrs. Owen. "I like Edward Thatcher." "I've fished with Bassett," said the minister. "A good fisherman ought to make a good politician; there's a lot, I guess, in knowing just how to bait the hook, or where to drop the fly, and how to play your fish. And Bassett is a man of surprising tastes. He's a book collector,--rare editions and fine bindings and that sort of thing." "Is it possible! The newspapers that abuse him never mention those things, of course," said Mrs. Martin.