“At Washington. Papa had some legislative business there. The only way to get the thing through was to camp there, he said, and we camped there for a whole winter. I was afraid at first that it was going to be wretchedly dull. And it was, for a few weeks, until papa got his bearings, for meanwhile Aunt Madeleine had started to live up to her theory that if you got into the House set first your chances for the Senate and Cabinet sets were nothing at all. One afternoon at Mrs. Senator Pritter’s, I met an army man who is just the sort you have been threatening me with. Of course he only pretended to be unserious, but I gave him the credit of the pretence. One of the women had whispered to me that the ring was going to defeat him for a promotion. When I asked him what the ring had against him, he was almost serious for a moment, and to tell you the truth, I almost liked him that way. ‘Who told you about the ring?’ he asked me. ‘My sources of information cannot be divulged,’ I said. ‘But why don’t you get it anyhow?’ He shook his head. ‘Let us talk about the weather.’ I wouldn’t let him off that way. ‘I like fighters,’ I persisted. ‘Why don’t you get everybody to work for you? Isn’t that the way it’s done?’ ‘Will you work for me?’ he asked. ‘You’re laughing at me,’ I said, ‘but I will work for you.’ Now you will laugh too, but I got eight senators to speak to the President about the Lieutenant, and he was promoted after all. When I saw him again, he was dreadfully serious, and made a great mess of thanking me. Afterward he wrote me a nice letter from Manila. All that got me quite interested in Washington.”
“Washington is quite an entertaining game—when you win.”
“I don’t ask to win always—if I like the game. It’s only in games I don’t like that I insist on winning.... What are you so quiet about?”
“I was thinking ... how nice it was that you were coming out.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“My dear, don’t flutter forth into this too-serious world in a distrustful mood.”
“I never have moods; I only have tenses.”