and kissed them for having been
kissed; perhaps with vague thoughts of robbing them of some portion of
the blissful wealth wherewith they had been invested. Richard, being
male, for his part thought the less about it, and went simply meditating
future sweet aggressions. And that shows the difference between a man
and a maid.

Richard, feeding his love with thoughts of Dorothy and his vanity with
ink, and thereby gaining two mighty reasons for living, began to keep
earlier hours. He turned out at nine o'clock instead of eleven and
twelve, hours which had formerly matched his languid fancy. These
energetic doings bred alarm in both Matzai and Mr. Pickwick, evoking
snappish protests from the latter, who, being of a nocturnal turn, held
that the day was meant for sleep. On the morning after he had been
honored with the privilege of the veranda door, Richard was borne upon
by something akin to gloom. This feeling went with him from bed to bath,
and from bath to breakfast, and finally walked with him all the way to
the Harley house. He was willing to sacrifice the _Daily Tory_ and yoke
himself personally to the mills of Senator Hanway's designs; but he must
see Dorothy. That brightness was the bribe, unspoken and unknown to all
save himself, that had brought him into Washington and these sundry and
divers plots and counterplots of state. And now to be cheated through
the polite blunderings of a gentleman who was so engaged in considering
himself that he had neither time nor eyes for any other! Richard swore
roundly in mental fashion at his contrary fate. And yet he saw no way to
better the situation; and perforce, for this morning at least, he was
driven to push the bell of the veranda door. He might have gone about
the ceremony with more cheer had he known how he was to gain an ally in
his troubles; one, moreover, whose aid was sure to prove effective.

As Senator Hanway's black messenger ushered Richard into that
statesman's study, the radiant Dorothy, perched at the end of Senator
Hanway's table, was the picture that greeted his eyes. Our radiant one
sought to stifle her effulgence beneath a look severe and practical.
This expression of practical severity was a failure, and served to
render her more dazzling.

"I have made up my mind," quoth Dorothy, the moment Richard was inside
the door, and speaking in the loud, dead-level monotone which she
conceived to be the voice for business conversations as against the
gigglin