aste prayers on that? Besides, Allen solemnly declares
that the people are to be trusted. It's not for me to set my prayers
against the will of the pee-pull."

"If you had a vote," he persisted, "you wouldn't vote for me?"

"I should have to know what you want to go to the legislature for before
committing myself. What _are_ you doing it for?"

"To do all the mischief I can, of course; to support all the worst
measures that come up; to jump when the boss's whip cracks!"

She refused to meet him on this ground. He saw that any expectation he
might have that she would urge him to pledge himself to noble endeavor
and high achievements as a state legislator were doomed to
disappointment. He was taken aback by the tone of her retort.

"I hope you will do all those things. You could do nothing better
calculated to help your chances."

"Chances?"

"Your chances--and we don't any of us have too many of coming to some
good sometime."

"I believe you are really serious; but I don't understand you."

"Then I shall be explicit. Just this, then, to play the ungrateful part
of the frank friend. The sooner you get your fingers burnt, the sooner
you will let the fire alone. I suppose Mr. Bassett has given the word
that you are graciously to be permitted to sit in his legislature. He
could hardly do less for you than that, after he sent you into the arena
last June to prod the sick lion for his entertainment."

They were waiting at a corner for a break in the street traffic, and he
turned toward her guardedly.

"You put it pretty low," he mumbled.

"The thing itself is not so bad. From what I have heard and read about
Mr. Bassett, I don't think he is really an evil person. He probably
didn't start with any sort of ideals of public life: you did. I read in
an essay the other night that the appeal of the highest should be always
to the lowest. But you're not appealing to anybody; you're just
following the band wagon to the centre of the track. Stop, Look, Listen!
You've come far enough with me now. The walls of my prison house loom
before me. Good-morning!"

"Good-morning and good luck!"

That night Sylvia wrote a letter to one of her classmates in Boston.
"I'm a school-teacher," she said,--"a member of the gray sisterhood of
American nuns. All over this astonishing country my sisters of this
honorable order rise up in the morning, even as you and I, to teach the
young idea how to shoot. I look with veneration upon those