"
"No, that's precisely what he isn't," answered Joan. "You feel that he
belongs to no class, but his own. The class of the Abraham Lincolns, and
the Dantons."
"England's a different proposition," he mused. "Society counts for so
much with us. I doubt if we should accept even an Abraham Lincoln:
unless in some supreme crisis. His wife rather handicaps him, too,
doesn't she?"
"She wasn't born to be the chatelaine of Downing Street," Joan admitted.
"But it's not an official position."
"I'm not so sure that it isn't," he laughed. "It's the dinner-table that
rules in England. We settle everything round a dinner-table."
She was sitting in front of the fire in a high-backed chair. She never
cared to loll, and the shaded light from the electric sconces upon the
mantelpiece illumined her.
"If the world were properly stage-managed, that's what you ought to be,"
he said, "the wife of a Prime Minister. I can see you giving such an
excellent performance."
"I must talk to Mary," he added, "see if we can't get you off on some
promising young Under Secretary.
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