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."




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