"Well, I might try," he answered, and added curiously, "I wonder whom you find to play with? Not your father?"
"Oh, no, not Father. He is as serious as Mr. Benham, only he laughs a great deal more. Father jokes all the time, but there is something underneath that isn't a joke at all."
"I should like to talk to your father. I want to find out, if I can, what he really believes."
"You won't find out that," said Patty, "by talking to him."
"You mean he will not tell me?"
"Oh, he may tell you; but you won't know it. Half the time when he is telling the truth, it sounds like a joke, and that keeps people from believing him. He says the best way to keep a secret is to shout it from the housetops; and I've heard him say things straight out that sounded so far fetched nobody would think he was in earnest. I was the only person who knew that he was speaking the truth. They call that a 'method', the politicians. They used to like it before he was elected; but now it makes them restless. They complain that they can't do anything with him."
"That," remarked Stephen, as she paused, "appears to be the chronic complaint of politicians."
"Does it? Well, Mr. Gershom is always saying now that Father can't be depended on. It was much more peaceable," she concluded with artless confidence, "when he let them manage him. Now there are discussions and disagreements all the time. It all seems to be about what they think people want. Have you any idea what they want?"
"Does anybody know what they want—except when they want money?"
"Well, some of them would like Father to go to the Senate," she returned naïvely, "and some of them wouldn't. Do you think that Mr. Benham would be better in the Senate?"