"I couldn't like you any better, Bobby, if you had torn the hair off of my doll's head or broken my slate a dozen times," she laughed at me again as we slid together the last slide in the dance. "Now come over and be introduced to Mrs. Taylor. You have only a few minutes, for you and Buzz must both be back at the Capitol at two. I feel in honor bound to the State to send you both back on time." And while she spoke she led me across the hall of the clubhouse and into a room full of ladies, who sat at card tables consuming very beautiful food while also preparing to resume playing the cards. CHAPTER XII THE BEAUTIFUL MADAM WHITWORTH Sue then made for me many introductions and all of those lovely _grande dames_ gave to me affectionate welcomes. Some of them I had encountered at the dance of the Gouverneur Faulkner and all of them had smiles for me. "Why, boy, you are Henry's very self come back to us after all these years--only with a lot of added deviltry in the way of French beauty," said that Madam Taylor, who was very stately, with white hair and a very young countenance of sweetness. "The daredevil--it was like him to send you back to us as--as revenge," she added with something that almost seemed like anger under the sweetness of her voice. "It is what my father always named me, Madam, the 'daredevil,' and will you not accept me for your cherishing?" I spoke those words to her from an impulse that I could not understand but I saw them soothe a hurt in her eyes as she laughed and kissed my cheek as I raised my head from kissing her jeweled hand. "Yes," she answered me softly. "Come on, L'Aiglon; it's time to beat it. We are late and Sue is beginning to shoo," called my Buzz from the door of the card room. "We are coming home with Phil for supper to-night, Mrs. Taylor, and the Prince wants an introduction to your custard pie. Yes'm, seven sharp! Come on, Bob!" "My Buzz," I said to that Mr. Buzz Clendenning as he raced the slim car through the country and the city up to the Capitol hill, "you give to me a life of much joy in only a few days. I would that it could so continue." "It just will until we are jolly old boys with long white beards and canes, Bobby," he answered me with an affectionate grin as we rounded a corner on two wheels of the car. "Say, let's get out of this politics soon, go in for selling timber lands, marry two of the calicoes and found families. We'll call the firm Carruthers and Clendenning and I choose Sue. You can decide about your dame later."