This figurative taxpayer personified for him the rural vote whose strength was his strength, and whose thought he made his own. He was hearkening to the murmur of the counties which the canal did not touch, but whose memory of its flagrant abuses was long, and the conclusion that he reached the country newspapers of his system began speedily to express. One editor bewailed the "Hundred-Million-Dollar-Millstone" which the governor proposed to hang about the people's neck; another attacked the consistency of the man who would to-day scatter like a prodigal what he had scrimped yesterday to save; while a third pertinently inquired whether such a spendthrift were fit timber to put in Washington as a check upon the waxing extravagance of Congress? By dint of repetition these things attained wide currency. Shelby was untroubled. "Millions, to be sure," he replied to a query of his wife's. "The commercial supremacy of a state is perforce a question of millions." "But they're saying you risk your presidential chances," she lamented. "Do take every care to strengthen yourself. It's the fondest dream of my life to see you President. You must let nothing stand between you and the nomination." "Thank heaven I'm not stung that badly!" the governor ejaculated. "But for my sake! If I should ask you--beg you on my knees?" "I'd say you should be in better business." He answered her lightly, and playfully pinched her ear, but she saw that no word of hers could sway his purpose, and hated him. For the hour, however, even this teasing vision of herself as first lady of the land paled before the very present topic of Milicent's debut. Despite Shelby's advice and her own pleadings, the girl had not been allowed to return to her school in the autumn; for when they met at the summer's end, the revelation of her daughter's good looks and unconscious girlish charm, by her mother called manner, revived a shadowy project of Cora's for an elaborate coming-out ball which had enticed her in the early days of life in Albany. Neither Milicent's reluctance nor her stepfather's protest against the launching of so young a girl availed. "Only last week I saw her playing with a doll," said Shelby, routed at every turn. "What an argument! I played with dolls after I was married to Joe. If you postponed a woman's debut till she tired of dolls, you would conflict with her funeral." This sally displayed such unexpected humor that Shelby laughed, and his wife seized the favoring moment to end discussion. "It's my duty to my child," she declared; "and of that, a mother is the best judge."