"The ship of state's wobbling badly through your neglect." Craig laughed, looking at Margaret.

"Grant thinks that's a jest," said he.

"Instead, it's the sober truth.

I am engaged in keeping my Chief in order, and in preventing the President from skulking from the policies he has the shrewdness to advocate but lacks the nerve to put into action." Margaret stood looking after him as he strode away.
"You mustn't mind his insane vanity," said Arkwright, vaguely uneasy at the expression of her hazel eyes, at once so dark, mysterious, melancholy, so light and frank and amused.
"I don't," said she in a tone that seemed to mean a great deal.
He, still more uneasy, went on: "A little more experience of the world and Josh'll come round all right--get a sense of proportion." "But isn't it true ?" asked Margaret somewhat absently.
"What ?" "Why, what he said as he was leaving.

Before you came he'd been here quite a while, and most of the time he talked of himself--" Arkwright laughed, but Margaret only smiled, and that rather reluctantly.
"And he was telling how hard a time he was having; what with Stillwater's corruption and the President's timidity about really acting against rich, people--something about criminal suits against what he calls the big thieves--I didn't understand it, or care much about it, but it gave me an impression of Mr.Craig's power." "There IS some truth in what he says," Arkwright admitted, with a reluctance of which his pride, and his heart as well, were ashamed.
"He's become a burr, a thorn, in the Administration, and they're really afraid of him in a way--though, of course, they have to laugh at him as every one else does." "Of course," said Margaret absently.
Arkwright watched her nervously.