"Well, I may take a little run down to Bermuda and see the bishop and Miss Felicity. Just think of leaving all this ice and snow, and about the second day out beginning to shed your superfluous outer garments, until you arrive at your destination in white duck trousers and a Panama hat! Think of the odour of lilies, not to mention the onions! And there I shall find Miss Felicity, looking like the goddess Flora, wandering in those beautiful lily-fields that command a wide sweep of the purple sea. It's enough to stir one to poetry, is n't it?" "I wish I might go with you," Leigh remarked. A film seemed to come over Cardington's blue eyes, just the suggestion of a veil of secrecy. "Yes--yes--if you hadn't made other plans, you know. But you must go down there some winter, you must indeed. It's really a most charming place." "Well," Leigh said, rising and taking up his bundles, "give the bishop and Miss Wycliffe my regards." "I will," Cardington promised. "Perhaps they will return with me. I 'll take your excellent pipe along to smoke on the Gulf Stream and among the lilies. Good-bye!" CHAPTER XIV THE PRESIDENT TAKES A HAND One evening late in January, Leigh entered Cardington's room with his post-prandial pipe still burning. "What do you say," he demanded, "to going down to the opera house to hear the President of the United States speak? Here I 've been shut up all day, and forgot what was going on till I picked up the paper just now. I'm ripe for some excitement, the mood which in my undergraduate days would have tempted me to go out and paint the town." He threw himself into a chair, looked about with a sense of being at home, and passed his fingers wearily through the disordered masses of his hair. The other looked at him attentively. "You make a great mistake," he remarked, "in allowing yourself to get out of condition. With a reasonable regard to the laws of health, you could keep yourself looking like the discus-thrower, thinly disguised in modern habiliments." He spoke like an impersonal judge, who appreciates the excellence of a type and wishes to see it maintained. Leigh laughed with some bitterness. "You remember what the German professor said to his American student when he wished to take a rest. 'Who ever heard of a real mathematician with any health?'" "Ah, yes," Cardington returned, with a comprehending look in his eyes, "but I 'm afraid you had too good a time down there in New York, and that now you 're working too hard by way of penance. But in regard to your suggestion, I am inclined to think favourably of it. Not that the President _per se_ is an object of great interest to me. His mental processes are tolerably familiar, and I don't feel particularly in need of instruction concerning my duty toward God and my duty toward my neighbour. Still, this is an occasion of more than usual interest, as perhaps you are aware."