He paused in New York a few hours, long enough to get a disagreeable mail from the other side--a dismal letter from old Bagley, a suspiciously cheerful note from Evelyn, a few lines from Surrey with a postscript about Gwen--“I’ve shipped her off to Mentone. She’s a bit seedy this winter, poor girl.” Frothingham quarrelled at Hutt, drank himself into a state of glassy-eyed gloom and took the three-o’clock express for Washington. As he sat in the smoking car a man dropped into the next chair with a “How d’ye do, Frothingham?” Frothingham’s features slowly collected into an expression of recognition, of restrained pleasure. “Glad to see you, Wallingford. Going to Washington?” “Yes--I’m in Congress, you know.” “No, I didn’t know.” And it struck him as uncommonly modest in Wallingford never to have spoken of so distinguished an honour. “My father put me in last year.” “Oh, you’ve a seat in your family.” Frothingham nodded understandingly. “That’s very nice. They’ve almost abolished that sort of luxury with us. Nowadays, to get into Parliament a fellow has to put up a good many thousand pounds. Even then he must take his chances of winning a lot of noisy brutes. They often shout for him and vote for the other fellow.” Wallingford’s face had flushed when Frothingham said “a seat in your family,” and the flush had deepened as he went on. “You haven’t got it quite straight, Frothingham--about us, I mean. No one can have a Congressional seat in his family in America. My father has some influence with the party in New York City. He always puts up a lot of money for campaigns. And they give him the chance to name a Congressman--if he’s willing to pay for it. That’s between us, you understand. It’s a bad system. But it applies only to a few districts in New York and perhaps one or two other cities.” “It sounds like our system,” said Frothingham. “A devilish good system, I call it. If it weren’t for that the lower classes would be chucking us all out and putting their own kind in.” “Well, we think it bad. I feel something like a fellow who knows he wouldn’t have won the race if he hadn’t bribed the other fellow’s jockey.” “That’s your queer American way of looking at things. You are always pretending that birth and rank and wealth aren’t entitled to consideration. But that’s all on the surface--all ‘bluff,’ as you say. They get just as much consideration here as among us.” “You’re judging the whole country by the people in one small class--and not by any means all of them.” “Human nature is human nature,” replied Frothingham, with a cynical gleam in his eyeglass. “If you go out West----” “I’ll find what I’ve found in the East, no doubt--perhaps in a little different form. I’m visiting Western people at Washington--after I’ve stopped at the Embassy a few days--some people I’m meeting through an American acquaintance of ours in England--Charles Sidney.” “Sidney!” Wallingford laughed. “He’s my second cousin. Ain’t he a shouting cad?”