Alice Duer Miller

“ The question angered Laura. How in heaven’s name could a young and beautiful woman enjoy driving in the heat alone behind two lazy old horses. She expressed her irritation by answering as if she were speaking to an importunate child:
“It’s rather hot, you know.”
Mrs. Stanton, senior, always gentle and kind and unruffled, knew how to put underbred young people in the wrong: “It’s a shame to victimize you,” she said, with a faint accent on the pronoun. “Peters likes to feel he is driving a member of the family now and then, but there is no reason why you should go.” ”

“ Laura found that the purification of politics was not a bit more interesting than their corruption in Wixville.
Before the winter was over, however, she began to see that there were people who amused themselves and others, who were leading a life more nearly like what, in Wixville, she had pictured New York life. But her mother-in-law ignored them—though, oddly enough, they did not seem to want to be ignored. Laura used to think they would never maneuver for an invitation to Mrs. Stanton’s parties if they had only known how dull the parties were. ”

“ Many a poor girl has been disappointed at finding her husband's family less aristocratic than she supposed. Laura’s ill luck was that they were more so. The Stantons were too exclusive, too deeply rooted in tradition. They belonged to a group—small, in the North, at least—whose ancestors had come to this country not as farmers or religious enthusiasts, but as adventurous gentlemen, and had attempted, chiefly along the Hudson Valley, to establish a duplicate of English country life. ”

“ Treat thought he interpreted her thought as he murmured, so the Chairman couldn’t hear and feel too much an outsider: “Pretty rough diamond for Sally, isn’t he?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Peregrin. “Robinson’s a good deal of a man. A woman might do worse than marry a fellow like Robinson.” He turned benevolently to Laura. “Are you a good enough American to agree with me, Mrs. Stanton, that a woman might do worse than marry Jim Robinson?” ”

“ It was his business to be portentous about rising members of his party.
Peregrin went on: “He comes from one of those God-forsaken little towns in the Middle West—was mayor—the usual thing—gutter politics.”
“Pretty crooked, isn’t he?” asked Treat, who saw all politics in these terms.
“A great man for short-cuts,” replied Peregrin suavely. “But not out for himself—no. Sincerely eager to get things done, and of course a party man—a party man, I’m glad to say. A splendid record in Congress. We think he’ll go far.”
The Chairman nodded again, like Jove.
Laura decided to take a long chance. ”

“ To be mayor of Wixville seemed to Laura a pretty sordid job. She could not bear to see Jim working for it so eagerly. She might have tolerated it if his fellow-citizens had forced it on his acceptance, but she thought the struggle contemptible. Besides, it made him neglect her.
She was a very beautiful woman. The year before, when Tart had come campaigning through the State, a young reporter from a New York paper had told some one at a political dinner, who had told her, that in his opinion Mrs. Jim Robinson was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, “bar none.” ”

“ Then Jim, just as simply himself as in the little sitting-room at Wixville, not an extra adjective, his hands not in his pocket because that would not have been absolutely natural to him—and his voice low, carrying, everyday, and speaking to each person in the audience individually.
Laura, listening with every nerve in her body, almost screamed as he made a slip in grammar. He was talking about “practical politics.”
“I think politics aren’t half practical enough—not practical enough to run a business concern like the United States. ”

“ You’d better ask some other women to come and help you out.”
Mrs. Peregrin looked at him with scorn. “Where could I find any women who would be willing to help—except the horrors, and they of course can’t. Besides, everyone's away—the clever cats! The Hudson in August!”
“Laura Stanton is here with her mother-in-law.”
Mrs. Peregrin’s eye lightened and clouded again. “Laura’s rather a goose,” she said. “I mean that politicians are seldom fashionable, and Laura insists so on fashion. You know she comes from the Middle West.” ”

“ I could not send a message through a servant that there would be nothing human here except ourselves.”
“Politicians are human, goodness knows!”
“So Peregrin always contends.”
Presently the footman came back to say that Mrs. Justin Stanton. Jr., was out.
“Out!” said Mrs. Peregrin, casting the word straight in his teeth, as if it were his fault. The footman did not seem to care at all, but began calmly to take away the tea things, so that Mrs. Peregrin turned and attacked Treat: “Now will you tell me what Laura can be doing at this hour?” ”

“ Now that she knew they were politicians, she told herself that she had recognized their species as soon as she saw them. “I’m not much good at this sort of thing,” she said. “I hate politics.”
“They wont hate you,” answered Mrs. Peregrin. And then the group opened, allowing Laura to see that the central figure to whose words they had all been listening was Jim Robinson. The other men were laughing, and Jim’s eyes were still twinkling over some shrewd truth he had just uttered, when he saw his former wife standing in the doorway. His face changed ”

“ Their tradition of wealth and aristocracy was as solidly grounded as that of English county families. But a republic was no place for them, and most of them have ceased to exist—have lost their money and their prestige and been overwhelmed by the plutocrats of the ’eighties. ”

“ She admired tall men with a forward droop to their shoulders and a hollow behind their waistcoats, but she recognized that Jim, strongly built and not much taller than she was, had possibilities if he would take the trouble to bring them out. ”

“ Mrs. Peregrin was considering the question from all angles. “But then, she’s in such deep mourning. Justin Stanton has only been dead three months. Still, my party doesn’t promise to be very gay.”
“Gayer than dining with those old women at the Stantons. Poor, poor Laura!”
“Oh, I never can bring myself to pity a widow,” returned Mrs. Peregrin, and continued to the footman who had answered her ring: “Telephone to Mrs. Stanton’s house and ask if Mrs. Justin Stanton, Jr., will dine here tonight. Say there will be no one but ourselves and Mr. ”