Tom laughed when he told him about her. David found that there was no difficulty in speaking to Tom about Miss Lord. “But why should you expect something better of her?” Tom asked him. “Well, she _is_ capable----” “Bosh, my dear man. Look at her straight. The only strength she has, I am convinced, is the strength of Deane and Company--a strength she sucks.” Tom had met her once. Since then, he had skillfully avoided all David’s efforts to make him join them some night at dinner. “Now tell me frankly can you imagine that lady, with her advertised virginity, her mincing mind and her stiff sense of right and wrong, careering in open battle? Don’t you see that she is something only in her position? Her substance comes from the fields whose produce she helps distribute at a profit.” “She seems to be forever bowing to judgments like those of Aunt Lauretta.” “Of course, since she gets her keep from the same place.” David had many evenings alone. He found he liked them. He had never been included in more than a tithe of the whirling activities of Tom who, now, had added politics to his program. Tom was a member of Tammany Hall. “The young men are profiting by the folly of the reformers,” was the way Tom put it. “They have learnt, Davie dear, as I hope you shall learn also, generally speaking, that you can’t win a fight without joining with your enemy. We have done with kid-glove pats at corruption. We are going to clean up the undesirable elements of the Democratic Party by first entering their stronghold. That is why we are going into Tammany.” David had never managed to believe in the monopolized purity of the Republican Party, although his uncle had spent some breath upon him to that purpose. Largely, he was indifferent and neutral. He had a sense of guilt in his organic ignorance about such vital matters. He asked: “Is your partner, Mr. Lomney, also in Tammany?” “Lord no!” Tom exclaimed. And there it was--the incomprehensible that was forever cropping out! Why, in view of what Tom had just assured him about Tammany Hall, this protest of denial regarding Mr. Lomney? “Lomney is a Democrat,” Tom went on. “A Gold-democrat, of course. But he has no party affiliations of a direct sort.” “What other sort are there, Tom?” “There are the really important sort,” Tom smiled. “We are vitally concerned in certain franchise concessions: traction and gas and the like. See?” “Is that the reason Mr. Lomney must not belong to Tammany Hall?” “That is the reason, rather, why I should,” Tom paused. “We are in where we should be, and out where we should be. Understand?”