"Ah, there you are now!" he cried. "Well, little ones, I'll leave
you together. I've wasted as much time as I can spare to-day to
frivolity."
"Yes, hurry back to work," said Arkwright. "The ship of state's
wobbling badly through your neglect."
Craig laughed, looking at Margaret. "Grant thinks that's a jest,"
said he. "Instead, it's the sober truth. I am engaged in keeping
my Chief in order, and in preventing the President from skulking
from the policies he has the shrewdness to advocate but lacks the
nerve to put into action."
Margaret stood looking after him as he strode away.
"You mustn't mind his insane vanity," said Arkwright, vaguely
uneasy at the expression of her hazel eyes, at once so dark,
mysterious, melancholy, so light and frank and amused.
"I don't," said she in a tone that seemed to mean a great deal.
He, still more uneasy, went on: "A little more experience of the
world and Josh'll come round all right--get a sense of
proportion."
"But isn't it true?" asked Margaret somewhat absently.
"What?"
"Why, what he said as he was leaving. Before you came he'd been
here quite a while, and most of the time he talked of himself--"
Arkwright laughed, but Margaret only smiled, and that rather
reluctantly.
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