The Essential Winston Churchill Collection. Winston Churchill
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regarded him gravely as he spoke, and then her eyes left his face and became fixed upon an object at the far end of the corridor. Bob turned in time to see Janet Duncan swing on her heel and follow her mother up the stairs. He struggled to find words to tide over what he felt was an awkward moment.
"We've had a fine trip;" he said, "though I should much rather have stayed at home. The West is a wonderful country, with its canons and mountains and great stretches of plain. My father met us in Chicago, and we came here. I don't know why, because Washington's dead at this time of the year. I suppose it must be on account of politics." Looking at Jethro with a sudden inspiration, "I hadn't thought of that."
Jethro had betrayed no interest in the conversation. He was seated, as usual, on the small of his back. But he saw a young man of short stature, with a freckled face and close-cropped, curly red hair, come into the corridor by another entrance; he saw Isaac D. Worthington draw him aside and speak to him, and he saw the young man coming towards them.
"How do you do, Miss Wetherell?" cried the young man joyously, while still ten feet away, "I'm awfully glad to see you, upon my word; I am. How long are you going to be in Washington?"
"I don't know, Mr. Duncan," answered Cynthia.
"Did Worthy know you were here?" demanded Mr. Duncan, suspiciously.
"He did when he saw me," said Cynthia, smiling.
"Not till then?" asked Mr. Duncan. "Say, Worthy; your father wants to see you right away. I'm going to be in Washington a day or two--will you go walking with me to-morrow morning, Miss Wetherell?"
"She's going walking with me," said Bob, not in the best of tempers.
"Then I'll go along," said Mr. Duncan, promptly.
By this time Cynthia got up and was holding out her hand to Bob Worthington. "I'm not going walking with either of you," she said "I have another engagement. And I think I'll have to say good night, because I'm very tired."
"When can I see you?" Both the young men asked the question at once.
"Oh, you'll have plenty of chances," she answered, and was gone.
The young men looked at each other somewhat blankly; and then down at Jethro, who did not seem to know that they were there, and then they made their way toward the desk. But Isaac D. Worthington and his friends had disappeared.
A few minutes later the distinguished-looking senator with whom Jethro had been in conversation before supper entered the hotel. He seemed preoccupied, and heedless of the salutations he received; but when he caught sight of Jethro he crossed the corridor rapidly and sat down beside him. Jethro did not move. The corridor was deserted now, save for the two.
"Bass," began the senator, "what's the row up in your state?"
"H-haven't heard of any row," said Jethro.
"What did you come to Washington for?" demanded the senator, somewhat sharply.
"Er--vacation," said Jethro, "vacation--to show my gal, Cynthy, the capital."
"Now see here, Bass," said the senator, "I don't forget what happened in '70. I don't object to wading through a swarm of bees to get a little honey for a friend, but I think I'm entitled to know why he wants it."
"G-got the honey?" asked Jethro.
The senator took off his hat and wiped his brow, and then he stole a look at Jethro, with apparently barren results.
"Jethro," he said, "people say you run that state of yours right up to the handle. What's all this trouble about a two-for-a-cent postmastership?"
"H-haven't heard of any trouble," said Jethro.
"Well, there is trouble," said the senator, losing patience at last. "When I told Grant you were here and mentioned that little Brampton matter to him,--it didn't seem much to me,--the bees began to fly pretty thick, I can tell you. I saw right away that somebody had been stirring 'em up. It looks to me, Jethro," said the senator gravely, "it looks to me as if you had something of a rebellion on your hands."
"W-what'd Grant say?" Jethro inquired.
"Well, he didn't say a great deal--he isn't much of a talker, you know, but what he did say was to the point. It seems that your man, Prescott, doesn't come from Brampton, in the first place, and Grant says that while he likes soldiers, he hasn't any use for the kind that want to lie down and make the government support 'em. I'll tell you what I found out. Worthington and Duncan wired the President this morning, and they've gone up to the White House now. They've got a lot of railroad interests back of them, and they've taken your friend Sutton into camp; but I managed to get the President to promise not to do anything until he saw you tomorrow afternoon at two."
Jethro sat silent so long that the senator began to think he wasn't going to answer him at all. In his opinion, he had told Jethro some very grave facts.
"W-when are you going to see the President again?" said Jethro, at last.
"To-morrow morning," answered the senator; "he wants me to walk over with him to see the postmaster-general, who is sick in bed."
"What time do you leave the White House?--"
"At eleven," said the senator, very much puzzled.
"Er--Grant ever pay any attention to an old soldier on the street?"
The senator glanced at Jethro, and a twinkle came into his eye.
"Sometimes he has been known to," he answered.
"You--you ever pay any attention to an old soldier on the street?"
Then the senator's eyes began to snap.
"Sometimes I have been known to."
"Er--suppose an old soldier was in front of the White House at eleven o'clock--an old soldier with a gal suppose?"
The senator saw the point, and took no pains to restrain his admiration.
"Jethro," he said, slapping him on the shoulder, "I'm willing to bet a few thousand dollars you'll run your state for a while yet."
CHAPTER V
"Heard you say you was goin' for a walk this morning, Cynthy," Jethro remarked, as they sat at breakfast the next morning.
"Why, of course," answered Cynthia, "Cousin Eph and I are going out to see Washington, and he is to show me the places that he remembers." She looked at Jethro appealingly. "Aren't you coming with us?" she asked.
"M-meet you at eleven, Cynthy," he said.
"Eleven!" exclaimed Cynthia in dismay, "that's almost dinner-time."
"M-meet you in front of the White House at eleven," said Jethro, "plumb in front of it, under a tree."
By half-past seven, Cynthia and Ephraim with his green umbrella were in the street, but it would be useless to burden these pages with a description of all the sights they saw, and with the things that Ephraim said about them, and incidentally about the war. After New York, much of Washington would then have seemed small and ragged to any one who lacked ideals and a national sense, but Washington was to Cynthia as Athens to a Greek. To her the marble Capitol shining on its hill was a sacred temple, and the great shaft that struck upward through the sunlight, though yet unfinished, a fitting memorial to him who had led the barefoot soldiers of the colonies