But when they did appear later, weeks later, on the very first page of the _Record_, with the words, "Speech of the Honorable Jerome B. Garwood," in black types at the head, they were long and full of statistics, not at all like the fiery speech he had made that last night of the campaign. She could find no mention of the speech in the daily newspapers, and she had her fears that Jerome was not being appreciated. He had made an effort at first to write to her daily, but soon there were lengthy intervals between the letters, and the letters themselves grew shorter, seeming to have been written late at night, when he was tired and sleepy. But they were always filled with admonitions for the boy, and Emily found joy in translating them into the baby tongue the child understood so well, as she could tell by the big blue eyes and the cooings of his drooling little lips. In January, just as she was beginning to recover her strength, a new trial came upon her, the last she had ever anticipated. The directors of the bank held their annual meeting, and to the surprise of all Grand Prairie, her father was not reëlected president. It was a blow to him, though he was too proud to show it. Yet Emily could see the change it wrought in him. He seemed to age suddenly, and shrank from going out, spending most of his time in his library, where he pretended to be reading his books, though she often surprised him with his glasses between the leaves in the old familiar way, gazing out at nothing. He had made the fatal discovery that old age was upon him at last. Dade had gone away with her mother in search of health at some new springs in Maine. After trying their waters for a while they suddenly departed for Europe, as Dade announced in an ecstatic letter. Now they were in Holland, and Dade wrote from Amsterdam of the quaintness of the place and of the picturesque sails of the boats on the little Amstel, comparing them for color to those one sees, or imagines, on the Adriatic. And so Emily was left alone with her old father and infant child. She had looked forward ardently to the adjournment of Congress and Jerome's return. Now that he was come, she found that she was to see little of him. He must plunge into the campaign, he said. On this Monday morning, he came in late for dinner, clapped his hands two or three times in the baby's face, laughed at the winking of the blue eyes, ate his dinner alone at a corner of the dining table, smoked a cigar, read the Chicago papers, threw them in a heap on the floor, and then stretched himself on the divan in a dark corner of the parlor and went to sleep. IV