elieve in borrowing a hundred dollars gold and paying back in
fifty dollars silver. What's your opinion, Lord Redgrave; you don't do
that sort of thing in England, do you? Uncle Russell is a Sound Money
man too. He's got too much gold locked up to want silver for it."

"My dear Zaidie," said Mrs. Van Stuyler, "what _have_ democratic and
republican politics and bimetalism got to do with----"

"With a trip in this wonderful vessel which Pop told me years ago could
go up to the stars if it ever was made? Why just this, Lord Redgrave is
an Englishman and too rich to believe in anything but sound money, so is
Uncle Russell, and there you have it, or should have."

"I think I see what you mean, Miss Rennick," said their host, leaning
back in his chair and folding his hands behind his head, as steamboat
travellers are wont to do when seas are smooth and skies are blue. "The
_Astronef_ might come down like a vision from the clouds and preach the
Gospel of Gold in electric rays of silver through the commonplace medium
of the Morse Code. How's that for poetry and practice?"

"I quite agree with his lordship as regards the practice," said Mrs. Van
Stuyler, talking somewhat rudely across him to Zaidie. "It would be an
excellent use to put this wonderful invention to. And then, I am sure
his lordship would land us in Central Park, so that we could go to your
Uncle's house right away."

"No, no, I'm afraid I must ask you to excuse me there, Mrs. Van
Stuyler," said Redgrave, with a change of tone which Miss Zaidie
appreciated with a swiftly veiled glance. "You see, I have placed myself
beyond the law. I have, as you have been good enough to intimate,
abducted--to put it brutally--two ladies from the deck of an Atlantic
liner. Further, in doing so I have selfishly spoiled the prospects of
one of the ladies. But, seriously, I really must go to Washington
first----"

"I think, Lord Redgrave," interrupted Mrs. Van Stuyler, ignoring the
last unfinished sentence and assuming her best Knickerbocker dignity,
"if you will forgive me saying so, that that is scarcely a subject for
discussion here."

"And if that's so," interrupted Miss Zaidie, "the less we say about it
the better. What I wanted to say was this. We all want the Republicans
in, at least all of us that have much to lose. Now, if Lord Redgrave was
to use this wonderful air-ship of his on the right side--why there
wouldn't be any standing against it."

"I must say that until