t. John recognized it
in spite of the difference in the mediums and smiled. Then he smiled
because of the words, and presently he laughed. It was the first real
pleasure he had had in many a day.

"Everybody is wild about it," said Claire, when she had finished.

The senator was shaking with laughter.

"That's good," he said, "that's good."

"Papa," said Margaret, when Claire had gone, "who do you think wrote
that song?"

"I don't know," said the senator. "But it's good."

"Aladdin wrote it," said Margaret.

"Upon my word!" said the senator.

Margaret knelt and threw her arms about her father's neck and blushed a
lovely blush.

"Isn't it splendid?"

There was a ring at the front door, and a telegram was brought in.

"Read it, Peggy," said the senator. He used that name only when moved
about something. The despatch was from the senator's youngest son,
Hannibal, and read:

Do not worry; we are singing Bispham up a tree.

"And Aladdin wrote the song!" cried Margaret. "Aladdin wrote it!"

The senator's face clouded for a moment. He forced the cloud to pass.

"We must thank him," he said. "We must thank him."

Senator St. John was reelected by a small majority. Everybody admitted
that it was due to Aladdin O'Brien's song. It was impossible to disguise
the engaging childishness of the vote.

XIV

As he went to his desk in the back room of the Portland "Spy" offices
the morning after the election, Aladdin had an evil headache, and a
subconscious hope that nobody would speak to him suddenly. He felt that
his arms and legs might drop off if anybody did, and he could have sworn
that he saw a gray sparrow with blue eyes run into a dark corner, and
turn into a mouse. But he was quite free from penitence, as the occasion
of this last offense had been joy and triumph, whereas that of his first
had been sorrow. He lighted a bad cigar, put off his editorial till
later, and covered a whole sheet of paper with pictures like these:

(Transcriber's note: These are simple sketches of birds and animals.)

He looked back with a certain smug satisfaction upon a hilarious evening
beginning with a dinner at the club, which some of the older adherents
of St. John had given him in gratitude for the part he had taken in the
campaign. He remembered that he had not given a bad exhibition, and that
noble prophecies had been made of his future by gentlemen in their cups,
and that he himself, when just far enough gon