The great spectacle of the crowded rooms made a deep impression on
Cousin Patty. To her this was no gathering of people who were eating
too much and drinking too much, and who were taking from the night the
hours which should have been given to sleep. To her it
was--fairy-land; all of the women were lovely, all of the men
celebrities--and the gold of the lights, the pink of the azaleas which
were everywhere in pots, the murmur of voices, the sweet insistence of
the music in the balcony, the trail of laughter over it all--these were
magical things, which might disappear at any moment, and leave her
among her boxes of wedding cake, after the clock struck twelve.
But it did not disappear, and she went home happy and too tired to talk.
At breakfast the next morning, Mary announced their programme for the
day.
"Delilah has telephoned that she wants us to have lunch with her at the
Capitol. Her father is in Congress, Cousin Patty, and they will show
us everything worth seeing. Then we'll go for a ride and have tea
somewhere, and the General and Leila have asked us for dinner. Shall
you be too tired?"
"Tired?" Cousin Patty's laugh trilled like the song of a bird. "I
feel as if I were on wings."
Cousin Patty trod the steps of the historic Capitol with awe. To her
these halls of legislation were sacred to the memory of Henry Clay and
of Daniel Webster. Every congressman was a Personage--and many a
simple man, torn between his desire to serve his constituents, and his
need to placate the big interests of his state, would have been touched
by the faith of this little Southern lady in his integrity.
"A man couldn't walk through here, with the statues of great men
confronting him, and the pictures of other great men looking down on
him, and the shades of those who have gone before him haunting the
shadows and whispering from the galleries, without feeling that he was
uplifted by their influence," she whispered to Mary, as from the
Member's Gallery she gazed down at the languid gentlemen who lounged in
their seats and listened with blank faces to one of their number who
was speaking against time.
Colin Quale, who lunched with them, was delighted with her.
"She is an example of what I've been trying to show you," he said to
Delilah. "She is so well bred that she absolutely lacks
self-consciousness, and she is so clear-minded that you can't muddy her
thoughts with scandals of this naughty world. She is a type worthy of
your study."