"You needn't laugh," complained Mrs. Harmon. "I do understand it all."
"I wasn't laughing at you," he answered. "—Well, forget all this, Lydia. What is it I can do for you?"
"Will you forget all this?" she asked with meaning. "Then look ahead with me for a while, Stephen. You won't be president."
"And I've lost my mayor," he added.
"Will it mean so much?" she asked, disappointed.
"It's Mather's year," he said decidedly. "Everything's going his way; it happens so every once in a while in New York. Then Tammany lays low; so shall I. But in the end they come in again; so with me."
"Then, planning for the future," she began, but hesitated, stopped, and started differently. "I've suffered a good deal, in this past year. We haven't got anything we wished, either you or I."
He wondered what brought her. "That is true," he said, not intending to commit himself.
"I've suffered from Judith as well as you," complained Mrs. Harmon. "She insulted me the other day; she isn't what I thought her, Stephen."