"I guess you'll come pretty near dying of shame before this evening's over," laughed Craig. "This is the first time in my life I ever was in a fashionable company." "There's nothing to be frightened about," Grant assured him. "Frightened!" Josh laughed boisterously--Arkwright could have wished he would temper that laugh. "I--frightened by a bunch of popinjays? You see, it's not really in the least important whether they like me or not--at least, not to me. I'll get there, anyhow. And when I do, I'll deal with them according to their deserts. So they'd better hustle to get solid with me." In the two years since he had seen Craig, Arkwright had almost forgotten his habit of bragging and blowing about himself--what he had done, what he was going to do. The newspapers, the clippings Josh sent him, had kept him informed of the young Minnesotan's steady, rapid rise in politics; and whenever he recalled the absurd boasting that had made him feel Craig would never come to anything, he assumed it was a weakness of youth and inexperience which had, no doubt, been conquered. But, no; here was the same old, conceited Josh, as crudely and vulgarly self-confident as when he was twenty-five and just starting at the law in a country town. Yet Arkwright could not but admit there had been more than a grain of truth in Craig's former self-laudations, that there was in victories won a certain excuse for his confidence about the future. This young man, not much beyond thirty, with a personality so positive and so rough that he made enemies right and left, rousing the envy of men to fear that here was an ambition which must be downed or it would become a tyranny over them--this young man, by skill at politics and by sympathetic power with people in the mass, had already compelled a President who didn't like him to appoint him to the chief post under an Attorney-General who detested him. "How are you getting on with the Attorney-General?" asked Arkwright, as they set out in his electric brougham. "He's getting on with me much better," replied Craig, "now that he has learned not to trifle with me." "Stillwater is said to be a pretty big man," said Arkwright warningly. "The bigger the man, the easier to frighten," replied Josh carelessly, "because the more he's got to lose. But it's a waste of time to talk politics to you. Grant, old man, I'm sick and worn out, and how lonesome! I'm successful. But what of that, since I'm miserable? If it wasn't for my sense of duty, by Heaven, I sometimes think I'd drop it all and go back to Wayne." "Don't do that, Josh!" exclaimed Arkwright. "Don't let the country go rolling off to ruin!" "Like all small creatures," said Craig, "you take serious matters lightly, and light matters seriously. You were right a moment ago when you said I needed a wife." "That's all settled," said Grant. "I'm going to get you one."