“Was he then the only honest public man we ever had?”
“Oh no!” replied Carrington cheerfully; “there have been one or two others.”
“If the rest of our Presidents had been like him,” said Gore, “we should have had fewer ugly blots on our short history.”
Ratcliffe was exasperated at Carrington's habit of drawing discussion to this point. He felt the remark as a personal insult, and he knew it to be intended. “Public men,” he broke out, “cannot be dressing themselves to-day in Washington's old clothes. If Washington were President now, he would have to learn our ways or lose his next election. Only fools and theorists imagine that our society can be handled with gloves or long poles. One must make one's self a part of it. If virtue won't answer our purpose, we must use vice, or our opponents will put us out of office, and this was as true in Washington's day as it is now, and always will be.”
“Come,” said Lord Skye, who was beginning to fear an open quarrel; “the conversation verges on treason, and I am accredited to this government. Why not examine the grounds?”
A kind of natural sympathy led Lord Dunbeg to wander by the side of Miss Dare through the quaint old garden. His mind being much occupied by the effort of stowing away the impressions he had just received, he was more than usually absent in his manner, and this want of attention irritated the young lady. She made some comments on flowers; she invented some new species with startling names; she asked whether these were known in Ireland; but Lord Dunbeg was for the moment so vague in his answers that she saw her case was perilous.
“Here is an old sun-dial. Do you have sun-dials in Ireland, Lord Dunbeg?”
“Yes; oh, certainly! What! sun-dials? Oh, yes! I assure you there are a great many sun-dials in Ireland, Miss Dare.”
“I am so glad. But I suppose they are only for ornament. Here it is just the other way. Look at this one! they all behave like that. The wear and tear of our sun is too much for them; they don't last. My uncle, who has a place at Long Branch, had five sun-dials in ten years.”
“How very odd! But really now, Miss Dare, I don't see how a sun—dial could wear out.”