“That’s as clever,” Margaret retorted, “as the remark of an under-secretary at a cabinet reception the other night, that it is one thing to entertain and another to be entertaining.  I won’t have you slander Washington.  I should like to spend all my winters here.”

“Dear me!” said Morgan, “I’ve been praising Washington.  I should like to live here also, if I had the millions of Jerry Hollowell.  Jerry is going to build a palace out on the Massachusetts Avenue extension bigger than the White House.”

“I don’t want to hear anything about Hollowell.”

“But he is the coming man.  He represents the democratic plutocracy that we are coming to.”

All Morgan’s banter couldn’t shake Margaret’s enjoyment of the cheerful city.  “You like it as well as anybody,” she told him.  And in truth he and Mrs. Morgan dipped into every gayety that was going.  “Of course I do,” he said, “for a couple of weeks.  I shouldn’t like to be obliged to follow it as a steady business.  Washington is a good place to take a plunge occasionally.  And then you can go home and read King Solomon with appreciation.”

Margaret had thought when she came to Washington that she should spend a good deal of time at the Capitol, listening to the eloquence of the Senators and Representatives, and that she should study the collections and the Patent-office and explore all the public buildings, in which she had such intense historical interest as a teacher in Brandon.  But there was little time for these pleasures, which weighed upon her like duties.  She did go to the Capitol once, and tired herself out tramping up and down, and was very proud of it all, and wondered how any legislation was ever accomplished, and was confused by the hustling about, the swinging of doors, the swarms in the lobbies, and the racing of messengers, and concluded unjustly that it was a big hive of whispered conference, and bargaining, and private interviewing.  Morgan asked her if she expected that the business of sixty millions of people was going to be done with the order and decorum of a lyceum debating society.  In one of the committee-rooms she saw Hollowell, looking at ease, and apparently an indispensable part of the government machine.  Her own husband, who had accompanied the party, she lost presently, whisked away somewhere.  He was sought in vain afterwards, and at last Margaret came away dazed and stunned by the noise of the wheels of the great republic in motion.  She did not try it again, and very little strolling about the departments satisfied her.  The west end claimed her—­the rolling equipages, the drawing-rooms, the dress, the vistas of evening lamps, the gay chatter in a hundred shining houses, the exquisite dinners, the crush of the assemblies, the full flow of the tide of fashion and of enjoyment—­what is there so good in life?  To be young, to be rich, to be pretty, to be loved, to be admired, to compliment and be complimented—­every Sunday at morning service, kneeling in a fluttering row of the sweetly devout, whose fresh toilets made it good to be there, and who might humbly hope to be forgiven for the things they have left undone, Margaret thanked Heaven for its gifts.