Through One Administration

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

"He seems to talk a good deal," Richard said, testily; "but, after all, you don't find out much of what he really thinks."

Bertha had discovered this early in their acquaintance. If the object in making the house attractive to him was that he might be led to commit himself in any way during his visits, that object was scarcely attained. When at last it appeared feasible to discuss the Westoria lands project in his presence, he showed no unwillingness to listen or to ask questions; but, the discussion being at an end, if notes had been compared no one could have said that he had taken either side of the question.

"He's balancing things," Planefield said. "I told you he would do it. You may trust him not to speak until he has made up his mind which side of the scale the weight is on."

When these discussions were being carried on Bertha had a fancy that he was more interested than he appeared outwardly. Several times she had observed that he asked her questions afterward which proved that no word had dropped on his ear unheeded, and that he had, for some reason best known to himself, reflected upon all he had heard. But their acquaintance had a side entirely untouched by worldly machinations, and it was this aspect of it which Bertha liked. There was something homely and genuine about it. He paid her no compliments; he even occasionally found fault with her habits, and what he regarded as the unnecessary conventionality of some of her surroundings; but his good-natured egotism never offended her. A widower without family, and immersed in political business, he knew little of the comforts of home life. He lived in two or three rooms, full of papers, books, and pigeon-holes, and took his meals at a hotel. He found this convenient, if not luxurious, and more than convenience it had never yet occurred to him to expect or demand. But he was not too dull to appreciate the good which fell in his way; and after spending an hour with the Amorys on two or three occasions, when he had left the scene of his political labors fagged and out of humor, he began to find pleasure and relief in his unceremonious visits, and looked forward to them. There came an evening when Bertha, in looking over some music, came upon a primitive ballad, which proved to be among the recollections of his youth, and she aroused him to enthusiasm by singing it. His musical taste was not remarkable for its cultivation; he was strongly in favor of pronounced melody, and was disposed to regard a song as incomplete without a chorus; but he enjoyed himself when his prejudices were pandered to, and Bertha rather respected his courageous, if benighted, frankness, and his obstinate faith in his obsolete favorites. So she sang "Ben Bolt" to him, and "The Harp that once through Tara's Halls," and others far less classical and more florid, and while she sang he sat ungracefully, but comfortably, by the fire, his eyes twinkling less watchfully, the rugged lines of his blunt-featured face almost settling into repose, and sometimes when she ended he roused himself with something like a sigh.

"Do you like it?" she would say. "Does it make you forget 'the gentleman from Indiana' and the 'senator from Connecticut'?"

"I don't want to forget them," he would reply with dogged good-humor. "They are not the kind of fellows it is safe to forget, but it makes my recollections of them more agreeable."

But after a while there were times when he was not in the best of humors, and when Bertha had a fancy that he was not entirely at ease or pleased with herself. At such times his visits were brief and unsatisfactory, and she frequently discovered that he regarded her with a restless and perturbed expression, as if he was not quite certain of his own opinions of her.

"He looks at me," she said to Richard, "as if he had moments of suspecting me of something."

"Nonsense!" said Richard. "What could he suspect you of?"

"Of nothing," she answered. "I think that was what we agreed to call it."