"What a pity that the Hon. Seneca had to miss your anachronisms, Volney," murmured Bernard Graves, who was a personable young gentleman of thirty.
"And Shelby," queried the editor, "hasn't that choice spirit your pity too?"
Mrs. Hilliard caught nothing of their sarcasm save Shelby's name.
"I miss his criticism," she declared. "It's so practical."
The editor fell to polishing his eye-glasses for lack of a reply.
"And so helpful," pursued the lady. "He has the faculty of ending a tangled discussion with a word."
"The dear man usually changes the subject," muttered the editor savagely under cover of an amiable platitude put forth by Mrs. Bowers.
"Or fogs it round with one of his Tuscarora yarns," dropped Graves.
The topic apparently knew no bottom for Mrs. Hilliard.
"How he will shine in Congress!" she went on. "Of course he'll get the nomination?" She referred the query to Sprague.