The people don't like that sort of royal airs." "I don't understand!" said Mrs.Lee.

"Why could you not do it now ?" "Because I should make a fool of myself;" replied Ratcliffe, pleased to think that Mrs.Lee should put him on a level with Washington.

She had only meant to ask why the thing could not be done, and this little touch of Ratcliffe's vanity was inimitable.
"Mr.Ratcliffe means that Washington was too respectable for our time," interposed Carrington.
This was deliberately meant to irritate Ratcliffe, and it did so all the more because Mrs.Lee turned to Carrington, and said, with some bitterness: "Was he then the only honest public man we ever had ?" "Oh no!" replied Carrington cheerfully; "there have been one or two others." "If the rest of our Presidents had been like him," said Gore, "we should have had fewer ugly blots on our short history." Ratcliffe was exasperated at Carrington's habit of drawing discussion to this point.

He felt the remark as a personal insult, and he knew it to be intended.

"Public men," he broke out, "cannot be dressing themselves to-day in Washington's old clothes.