“She is a very remarkable girl, Mr. Thorndyke, very remarkable; and she loves her old father better than he deserves. I have as good sons as any man ever had--but that daughter left me by my dead wife is worth to me everything else on God’s earth. The doctors have been frightening her about me lately. They tell her I work too hard for my time of life--that I ought to take a rest, and if I will do it I can add ten years to my life. Now, you know, the State organisation will never let me take a rest”--Senator Standiford said this quite seriously--“and Letty as good as told me six months ago that if I should be re-elected to the Senate”--the Senator uttered this “if” in a tone of the most modest deprecation--“_if_ I should be re-elected for another term--as she wishes me to be--then she wants me to resign. I don’t mind admitting that if any other human being had said this to me except my daughter Letty, I should have reckoned myself drunk or crazy to have listened to it. But my daughter, as I mentioned to you, is a remarkable girl. Besides, the child is not strong herself, and if she gets to worrying about me--well, you can see, Mr. Thorndyke, how it is with me. The world credits me with loving place and power above everything on earth, but there is something dearer to me than the office of President of the United States: it is my daughter. And the sweetness and the tenderness of that child for her old father----” Here Senator Standiford took out a large red silk handkerchief and blew a blast like the blast of Roncesvalles. Being an accomplished judge of men, Senator Standiford, while speaking, had watched Thorndyke closely. Had he shown any undue elation over the political prospects indicated by Senator Standiford’s possible retirement, Thorndyke’s fortunes would have been ruined. But by the lucky accident of having a good heart he said the most judicious thing possible. “I don’t see any indications of overwork in you, Senator. At the same time I know you do the work of ten men, and I also know the exercise of power is so dear to you that, from the pound-master in your own town up to the candidate for President, you give everything your personal supervision. But as for Miss Standiford’s not being strong--why, I took her in to dinner less than a month ago, and remarked on her freshness and beauty. She looked the picture of health and ate more dinner than I did.” “Did she?” asked the Senator, anxiously. “What did she eat?” Thorndyke did not feel in the least like laughing at Senator Standiford’s inquiry, and answered, promptly: “Oh, everything. I remember chaffing her about her good appetite.”