up-state member, "the governor hadn't ought
to live next to Vane. But as to gettin' him a house like this--kind of
royal, ain't it? Couldn't do justice to it on fifteen hundred a year,
could he? Costs you a little mite more to live in it, don't it?"

"It costs me something," Mr. Crewe admitted modestly. "But then
our governors are all rich men, or they couldn't afford to pay the
Northeastern lobby campaign expenses. Not that I believe in a rich man
for governor, gentlemen. My contention is that the State should pay
its governors a sufficient salary to make them independent of the
Northeastern, a salary on which they can live as befits a chief
executive."

These sentiments, and others of a similar tenor, were usually received
in silence by his rural guests, but Mr. Crewe, being a broad-minded
man of human understanding, did not set down their lack of response to
surliness or suspicion of a motive, but rather to the innate caution of
the hill farmer; and doubtless, also, to a natural awe of the unwonted
splendour with which they were surrounded. In a brief time his kindly
hospitality became a byword in the capital, and fabulous accounts of it
were carried home at week ends to toiling wives and sons and daughters,
to incredulous citizens who sat on cracker boxes and found the Sunday
papers stale and unprofitable for weeks thereafter. The geraniums--the
price of which Mr. Crewe had forgotten to find out--were appraised at
four figures, and the conservatory became the hanging gardens of Babylon
under glass; the functionary in buff and green and silver buttons and
his duties furnished the subject for long and heated arguments. And
incidentally everybody who had a farm for sale wrote to Mr. Crewe. Since
the motives of every philanthropist and public benefactor are inevitably
challenged by cynics, there were many who asked the question, "What did
Mr. Crewe want?" It is painful even to touch upon this when we know that
Mr. Crewe was merely doing his duty as he saw it, when we know that he
spelled the word, mentally, with a capital D.

There were many, too, who remarked that a touching friendship in the
front seats (formerly plainly visible to the naked eye from the back)
had been strained--at least. Mr. Crewe still sat with Mr. Botcher and
Mr. Bascom, but he was not a man to pretend after the fires had cooled.
The Honourable Jacob Botcher, with his eyes shut so tight, that his
honest face wore an expression of agony, seemed to