"But," said she, "Craig has convinced her that he will amount to something." "Ridiculous!" scoffed Branch, with an airy wave of the hand.

But there was in his tone a concealment that set the shrewd old lady furtively to watching him.
"What do they think of him among the public men ?" inquired she.
"He's laughed at there as everywhere." Her vigilance was rewarded; as Branch said that, malignance hissed, ever so softly, in his suave voice, and the snake peered furtively from his calm, cold eyes.

Old Madam Bowker had not lived at Washington's great green tables for the gamblers of ambition all those years without learning the significance of eyes and tone.

For one politician to speak thus venomously of another was sure sign that that other was of consequence; for John Branch, a very Machiavelli at self-concealment and usually too egotistic to be jealous, thus to speak, and that, without being able to conceal his venom--"Can it be possible," thought the old lady, "that this Craig is about to be a somebody ?" Aloud she said: "He is a preposterous creature.

The vilest manners I've seen in three generations of Washington life.