“Oh, no, you wouldn’t, Lord Frothingham,” Mrs. Ballantyne answered him--for his benefit she was “laying it on with a trowel,” as Ysobel would have said. “They’re--but you know how it is in politics. I wish Samuel would leave public life.” “What!” exclaimed Ballantyne, in mock horror. “And have all our poor relations that I’ve got nicely placed at the public crib bounced in a body, and come grunting and squealing to me to be supported! One of the objects in getting public office in this country, Lord Frothingham, is to relieve one’s self of the support of one’s poor relations and friends. The late President Arthur said to me when he was at the White House: ‘The degradation of it! That I should have to lower myself for six hours every day to keeping an employment agency!’” “But we can’t dress and drive round the streets from six o’clock until eight,” said Ysobel. “They’ll be in the reception room by eight,” replied her mother, “or else they won’t be through dinner. We can get out unseen.” Frothingham maintained his look of blank indifference, but underneath he was vastly amused--“And they’re quite unconscious what cads they are,” he thought. As if in answer to this, Senator Ballantyne said to him, in a tone of humourous apology: “Our constituents are plain people, Lord Frothingham--honest, simple. They lead quiet, old-fashioned lives. I always send my family away or make them ‘come off their perch’ when I have to receive anyone from home--that is, any but my regular political lieutenants. To tell you the gospel truth, I’m ashamed to have my old friends see how absurd we’ve become.” At six o’clock Frothingham was idling in a small smoking room in the rear of the great parlour--it was on the second floor. Senator Ballantyne came in and grew red in the cheeks. “Oh, I didn’t expect to see you,” he said, with an embarrassed laugh. Frothingham pretended not to notice, but he instantly saw the embarrassment, and the cause of it as well. The Senator was not in evening dress, nor even in his uniform of “statesman’s frock.” To combat the unfavourable impression his great castle would make upon the excursionists from his distant State he had got himself up in an old blue sack suit with torn pocket and ragged cuff, in trousers bagging at the knees and springing fantastically where they covered his boot-legs. He seated himself and talked absently until there was a ring of the front doorbell. He started up. “I must go,” he said. “That’s the first ones.” And he hurried away.