When the Handys started to Topeka for the opening of the session, they began to inflame with importance as the train whistled for the junction east of town, and by the time they actually arrived at Topeka they were so highly swollen that they could not get into a boarding-house door, but went to the best hotel, and engaged rooms at seven dollars a day. The town gasped for two days and then began to laugh and wink. Two weeks after their arrival at the State capital, Abner Handy had been made chairman of the joint committee on the calendar, second member of the judiciary committee and member of the railroad committee, and Mrs. Handy had established credit at a Topeka dry-goods store and was going it blind. She gave her hair an extra dip, and used to come sailing down the corridors of the hotel in gorgeous silk house-gowns with ridiculous trains, and never appeared at breakfast without her diamonds. Before the session was well under way she had been to Kansas City to have her face enameled and had told the other "ladies of the hotel," as the wives of members of the legislature stopping at the hotel were called, that Topeka stores offered such a poor selection; she confided to them that Mr. Handy always wore silk nightshirts, and that she was unable to find anything in town that he would put on. She regarded herself as a charmer, and made great eyes at all the important lobbyists, to whom she put on her baby voice and manner and said that she thought politics were just simply awful, and added that if she were a man she would show them how honest a politician could be, but she wasn't, and when Abner tried to explain it to her it made her head ache, and all she wanted him to do was to help his friends, and she would add coyly: "I'm going to see that he helps you--whatever he does."