Senator Ballantyne frowned, became abstracted, was presently sighing. His eldest daughter heard it and gave a theatrical sigh of sympathy. Ballantyne seemed not to hear, but something had irritated him, for he frowned heavily.
Mrs. Ballantyne came in from her drive. She was a fine-looking woman, had all the outward appearance of the grande dame, and acted the part so well that not even herself had caught her in a slip for many years—a notable triumph in the art of pose when it is considered that she was a country-school teacher until she was twenty-four and had never seen a city or been east of the Alleghenies until she was past thirty. Frothingham helped her relieve herself of a great sable-lined cloak which he handed to a servant. The servant bent double in a bow—Mrs. Ballantyne paid well for obsequiousness. “When do those people of yours begin to come, Samuel?” she asked, framing her sentence and her manner to impress Frothingham.
Ballantyne looked annoyed, and, with a furtive glance at him, said: “Lord Frothingham will carry away a strange notion of democratic institutions as represented by Senators, mother.”
Mrs. Ballantyne permitted him to call her mother because it was the only word of address that did not rasp her aristocratic nature. Her name was Jane—that she could not endure even before the days of her grandeur. She had made him call her Mrs. Ballantyne before people until she discovered that it was “shocking bad form.” She decided upon mother because the old Austrian Ambassador, whose title was of the oldest and whose blood was of the thin and pale bluest, said to her one day, “I like your American fashion of husbands and wives calling each other mother and father. It has a grand old patriarchal ring. My wife and I have adopted it.”
“You must get out of the way by six o’clock,” continued Ballantyne, addressing himself to “mother.” “Several of them said they’d come round early for half an hour’s chat before supper.”
“I’m sorry we’re to be driven out,” said Frothingham. “I fancy I’d like to see your constituents.”
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t, Lord Frothingham,” Mrs. Ballantyne answered him—for his benefit she was “laying it on with a trowel,” as Ysobel would have said. “They’re—but you know how it is in politics. I wish Samuel would leave public life.”
“What!” exclaimed Ballantyne, in mock horror. “And have all our poor relations that I’ve got nicely placed at the public crib bounced in a body, and come grunting and squealing to me to be supported! One of the objects in getting public office in this country, Lord Frothingham, is to relieve one’s self of the support of one’s poor relations and friends. The late President Arthur said to me when he was at the White House: ‘The degradation of it! That I should have to lower myself for six hours every day to keeping an employment agency!’”
“But we can’t dress and drive round the streets from six o’clock until eight,” said Ysobel.
“They’ll be in the reception room by eight,” replied her mother, “or else they won’t be through dinner. We can get out unseen.”