Page:The Gilded Age - Twain - 1874.pdf/353

 the sanctimonious old curmudgeon. Son-in-lawsinecure in the negro institutionThat about gauges himThe three committeemensons-in-law. Nothing like a son-in-law here in Washingtonor a brother-in-lawAnd everybody has 'emLet's seesixty-onewith placestwenty-five persuaded—it is getting onwe'll have two-thirds of Congress in timeDilworthy must surely know I understand him. Uncle DilworthyUncle Balloon Tells very amusing storieswhen ladies are not presentI should think so'm'm. Eighty-fiveThere. I must find that chairman. QueerBuckstone actsSeemed to be in loveI was sure of it. He promised to come hereand he hasn't Strange. Very strangeI must chance to meet him to-day."

Laura dressed and went out, thinking she was perhaps too early for Mr. Buckstone to come from the house, but as he lodged near the bookstore she would drop in there and keep a look out for him.

While Laura is on her errand to find Mr. Buckstone, it may not be out of the way to remark that she knew quite as much of Washington life as Senator Dilworthy gave her credit for, and more than she thought proper to tell him. She was acquainted by this time with a good many of the young fellows of Newspaper Row, and exchanged gossip with them to their mutual advantage.

They were always talking in the Row, everlastingly gossiping, bantering and sarcastically praising things, and going on in a style which was a curious commingling of earnest and persiflage. Col. Sellers liked this talk amazingly, though he was sometimes a little at sea in it—and perhaps that didn't lessen the relish of the conversation to the correspondents.

It seems that they had got hold of the dry-goods box packing story about Balloon, one day, and were talking it over when the Colonel came in. The Colonel wanted to know all about it, and Hicks told him. And then Hicks went on, with a serious air,

"Colonel, if you register a letter, it means that it is of