So, in the third week of December I set Rachel at Mrs. Senator Lumley and Mrs. Admiral Bixby--two women who can get almost anything in reason out of the President's wife. Rachel is about the most important woman in the old Washington aristocracy, and the Lumleys and the Bixbys are in the nature of fixtures here, not at all like an evanescent President or Cabinet person. So Rachel's request set the two women to work. And although the President's wife said she'd asked all she intended to ask, far too many, and didn't see why on earth she should be beset for a newcomer who had been reported to her as fat and impossible, still she finally yielded. I hadn't hoped to get an invitation for them for the Cabinet dinner, and I was astounded when it came. We had arranged to give a rather large informal dinner that night and had to call it off, as an invitation from the White House, even from the obscurest member of the President's family for any old function whatever, is a command that may not be disobeyed. Well, as I was saying, the invitation to the Cabinet dinner came unsought. It seems that the Burke breakfasts are making a great stir politically; so great a stir that they have made the President a little uneasy. Of course, the best way to get rid of an opponent is to conciliate him. Hence the royal command to Senator and Mrs. Burke to appear at his Majesty's dinner to his Majesty's ministers. Mrs. Burke is tremendously proud of her first two communications from the White House. As for the Senator, he looks at them half a dozen times a day. I went down to the New Year's reception to see how "ma" was getting on. As I had expected, she didn't stand very long. She cast about for a chair, and, seeing one, planted herself. Soon the Baroness joined her, and young Prince Krepousky joined Nadeshda, and then General Martin, who loves Mrs. Burke for the feeds she gives. The group grew, and Mrs. Burke began to talk in her drawling, humorous way, and Nadeshda laughed, which made the others laugh--for it's impossible to resist Nadeshda. When I arrived Mrs. Burke was "right in it." And after a while the President came and said: "Is this your reception, madam, or is it mine?" At which there was more laughing, he raising a great guffaw and slapping his hip with his powerful hand. Then they all went up to have something to eat, and the President spent most of the time with her.