I shook my head, and answered wearily: "Worse than that."
My wife regarded me in anxious silence, while manifestly she was
cudgelling her brains to divine what could have happened. As she told
me afterward, she imagined, from my doleful air, that I must at least
have a seed in my little sac.
"They have asked me to run for Congress in this district," I finally
vouchsafed to state.
Josephine dropped her fancy-work and sat upright with an air of
satisfaction which was wholly out of keeping with my own dejected mien.
"Really, Fred! Who has asked you? The Governor?"
"The Governor does not usually go round on his bended knees asking
candidates to run for Congress," I answered, with mild sarcasm.
"Well, the Mayor then?"
I have labored for years to make plain to Josephine the ramifications
of our National, State, and Municipal Government; but just as I am
beginning to think that she understands the matter tolerably well, she
is sure to break out in some such hopeless fashion as this, which shows
that her conceptions are still crookeder than a ram's horn. And the
strangest part is that she can tell you all about the English
Parliament and Home Rule, and whether any given statesman is a Liberal
or a Liberal Unionist, and about M. Clemenceau and the relative
strength of the Bonapartists and Orleans factions.
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