Girls -- Juvenile fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Juvenile fiction
"Why, I just can't believe that I'm Peggy Lee!" Peggy stood in the
aisle of a sleeping car and looked up and down its length. Keineth,
from her superior knowledge of sleeping cars, was pointing out to Peggy
its arrangements. Both girls were dressed in new coats and hats and
carried with them the bag Aunt Josephine had given Keineth and in which
they had packed their nightgowns and toilet articles.
For they were starting for Washington!
Two days before Mr. Lee had come home and asked the children what would
be the biggest surprise they could imagine! Of course they had guessed
all sorts of things and he had teased them for quite a little while
over it! Then, very quietly, he had said:
"Do you think you would like to make a little trip to Washington?"
Keineth had not been able to speak. Peggy, jumping from her chair,
rushed at her father and threw both arms about his neck.
"All of us?" she cried between hugs.
"No, this time we'll leave mother home with Billy and Alice. Then the
next time they'll go."
Peggy's eyes swept over Billy's and Alice's disappointed faces.
"Oh, I wish we could all go!"
"Mother'll make it up to them, my dear. I'll wager right now all sorts
of nice plans are floating around in her head. Well, can you be ready?"
"Can we--!" they cried in chorus.
The hours then were full of excited preparations. The new clothes had
to be purchased. "Keineth may be invited to meet the President," Mrs.
Lee had laughingly explained, as she held two pretty hats, one in each
hand, and considered them carefully.
"Oh, wouldn't that be _wonderful!_" Keineth whispered. She wanted to
ask him so many questions about Daddy--she would tell him that she
could keep a secret!
Billy gave them a thousand instructions. They must remember everything
they saw to tell him! They must climb the big monument and walk up the
Capitol steps and hear the echo in the rotunda of the Capitol Building.
They must go to Camp Meyer and to Arlington and to Mount Vernon and be
sure to see Washington's swords!
"And the White House china," Mrs. Lee added. "It must be as good as a
lesson in history to look at that exhibit in the White House! They'd
tell the tastes of the different ones who used them! I can picture
pretty Dolly Madison ordering all new china because the pattern of the
old did not please her!"
Billy broke in: "I'd want to go to the Treasury Building and see all
the money and the watchmen that guard the building from little
watch-houses! And the big machine where they destroy all the old money!
Four men have keys and they go and unlock it and put the money in it
and it gets ground and ground by sharp knives until it's just a pulp!
And then they sell the pulp! I wish I had one of those keys!" Billy was
very excited.
"And I want to see the Indian Exhibit at the National Museum," declared
Peggy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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