“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 through ridicule to victory. They looked up many institutions and monument, they even had time to go to the Navy Yard, and they saved the contemplation of the White House till the last. The White House, which Cynthia thought the finest and most graceful mansion in all the world, in its simplicity and dignity, a fitting dwelling for the chosen of the nation. Under the little tree which Jethro had mentioned, Ephraim stood bareheaded before the walls which had sheltered Lincoln, which were now the home of the greatest of his captains, Grant: and wondrous emotions played upon the girl's spirit, too, as she gazed. They forgot the present in the past and the future, and they did not see the two gentlemen who had left the portico some minutes before and were now coming toward them along the sidewalk. The two gentlemen, however, slowed their steps involuntarily at a sight which was uncommon, even in Washington. The girl's arm was in the soldier's, and her face, which even in repose had a true nobility, now was alight with an inspiration that is seen but seldom in a lifetime. In marble, could it have been wrought by a great sculptor, men would have dreamed before it of high things.