Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/101

, Fame, passing by many who had worked and waited for its coming, paused beside some unknown, and, bringing him forward, gave him a place on the platform toward which the eyes of the country were turned.

When Fame laid such hands on the Honorable Robert Eddington and thrust him before the public's gaze, the Honorable Robert's wife was probably the one person in the land not acutely surprised. Mrs. Eddington admired her husband very much, and had long felt that the country would some day need his services. When the summons came she was therefore not wholly unprepared, and she was able to support her husband through the first painless shock of the experience. That was the beginning and the end of Mrs. Eddington's work in the campaign. She was but little more than twenty-eight, beautiful, and socially popular. She knew nothing about politics, and, beyond a serene confidence in her husband's election to the high office for which he had been nominated, cared nothing about it. She therefore permitted the Honorable Robert to manage his own campaign with the kind assistance of his friends. If she occasionally