down the backbones of his admiring friends," I said after the pause which had been filled in by my busy thoughts. She was still writing her initials over the back of her tablet. "Who knows this better than I? Haven't I been a mother to the boy ever since that time I read surgical anatomy to him when he had tonsillitis? One of the most dramatic moments of my life was the night I stabbed—"

I caught myself, but not in time, for Cousin Eunice had looked up from her book with a horrified stare. "What?" she demanded.

"Oh, it was only that detestable Burke's automobile tire," I had to explain then, but I had kept the occurrence a secret hitherto, and I was not keen on telling it now.

"It was during the year of Alfred's internship and you remember that Burke was always doing him an ill turn? One drippy night that fall when I was in Doctor Gordon's car in front of the hospital and they didn't see me, I overheard Burke and another intern plotting to beat Alfred out of a surgical case that was coming in on the train that night and belonged, by rights, to him. They had arranged to hurry on over to the station first, in Burke's new car that his fond mamma had given him, but when they went back into the house to get their raincoats I was out of that machine like a Nemesis and had stuck my hat-pin into the two tires on Burke's car which were most in the shadow; so, when they started off, they had gone only about a block and were down in the mud swearing—when Alfred dashed grandly by on the ambulance."

"You little tiger!"

"Burke ought to have had the hat-pin stuck in him," I added savagely.

"Aren't we still barbarians—at heart?" she demanded, throwing her tablet aside and straightening up so suddenly that I knew her thoughts had already strayed away from my recital. "Now, that's the way I have always felt about Appleton since he's been governor. Lots of times when I have been helping Rufe write those violent attacks against him I would almost choke with rage. I actually wanted to kill him."

"You helped Rufe?" I asked with envy. "He admitted that you had sense enough to?"

"Some of the meanest things the Times has ever printed about him were my thoughts," she said proudly. "But it has never printed a lie!"

"Ah, that must be something worth while," I commented admiringly, for my ideas concerning women and their possible achievements are strictly modern. "I should like to be the power behind the revolving-chair."

I see already that the above paragraph contradicts itself, for being the power behind things is as old as Eve; but then, the prerogative of contradicting oneself belongs by rights to her daughters.

"Do you care for politics any more than you used to?" Cousin Eunice asked hopefully.

"Politics and mathematics were ever of equal interest to me," I was bound to acknowledge. "But I have been able to understand a little about the primary plan this summer—father's taught me. And I know that the 'machine gang' is always the other fellows!"

"Well, that's a brilliant start," said a sarcastic male voice from the other side of the hedge, and Rufe's amused face rose up to our confusion. Without waiting for invitation he came through and sat down on the grass beside us.

"Well, she'd enjoy some of our politicians, wouldn't she?" Cousin Eunice asked Rufe as she moved over farther to give him more room, for the althea branches were wide and thick, and entangled themselves in our hair persistently. "Whether she cares for politics or no, eh?"

"Oh, she'd lose her head over Chalmers," Rufe acquiesced as indifferently as the male relative of a girl always shows in discussing "possible" men. "Lord Byron is as a comic valentine compared with him in looks."

"Richard Chalmers," I repeated. "I've seen his name in the paper often, but I don't know exactly what he is."

"Neither does any one else," Rufe answered meaningly. "He's a rich young lawyer—inherited his money—and so shrewd that he's not going to join the Appleton forces, no matter what pretentions they make to get him on their side." He spoke as if he were arguing the question.

"Of course he isn't," Cousin Eunice added stoutly.

"But what is he?" I asked, fearful lest they get into a discussion and forget to satisfy my curiosity, which was—strange to say—considerably aroused.

"Well, if he would declare himself definitely upon the liquor question," Rufe explained concisely, "he would be about the most promising piece of gubernatorial timber that we have."

CHAPTER IV

A NEW GAME