"I didn't."
"Well, you ate a pound at least."
Anne protested. Maxwell had eaten a lot, and Ethel and Amy had eaten a
few, and Murray had come in.
"You remember, Amy, Murray came in."
"He didn't touch one, Anne. He never eats chocolates."
"He's afraid of getting fat."
"Anne!"
"He is. When he takes me out to lunch he thinks of himself, not of me.
The last time we had grapefruit and broiled mushrooms and lettuce; and I
wanted chops."
Maxwell had been glad to see Anne eat the chocolates. She had seemed as
happy as a child, and he had liked that. There was nothing childish
about Winifred. She had been always grown-up and competent and helpful.
He felt that he owed Winifred a great deal. They were not engaged, but
he rather hoped that some day they might marry. Of course that would
depend upon Winifred. She would probably make him give up the farm and
he would hate that. But a man might give up a farm for a woman like
Winifred and still have more than he deserved.
It will be seen that Maxwell was modest, especially where women were
concerned. The complacency of Murray Flint, weighing Amy against Ethel
and Ethel against Amy and Anne against both, would have seemed infamous
to Maxwell. He felt that it was only by the grace of God that any woman
gave herself to any man. He had a sense of honor which was founded on
decency rather than on convention. He had also a sense of high romance
which belonged more fittingly to the fifteenth than to the twentieth
century. He was not, however, aware of it. He looked upon himself as a
plain and practical chap who had a few things to work out politically
before he settled down to the serious business of farming. Of course if
he married Winifred he wouldn't settle down to the farm, but he would
settle down to something.
In the meantime here was Anne, reading Dickens, eating chocolates, and
leaning over the rail of the House Gallery to listen to his speeches.
It was rather wonderful to have her there. She wore a gray cape with a
chinchilla collar made out of Amy's old muff. A straight sailor hat of
rough straw came well down over her forehead and showed fluffs of
shining hair at the sides. Her little gray-gloved hands clasped the
violets he had given her. Above the violets her eyes were a deeper blue.
She came always alone. "Amy doesn't know," she had told him frankly;
"she wouldn't let me, come if she did."
"Why not?"
"I am supposed to be chaperoned."
"My dear child, I told you to bring either or both of your sisters."
"I don't want them. They would spoil it."
"How?"
She tried to explain. He and she could see things in the old Capitol
that Amy and Ethel couldn't.
He laughed, but knew it true. Anne's imagination met his in a rather
remarkable fashion. When they walked through Statuary Hall they saw not
Fulton and Père Marquette and Carroll of Carrollton; they saw, rather, a
thousand ships issuing forth on the steam of a teakettle; they saw
civilization following a black-frocked prophet; they saw aristocracy
raising its voice in the interest of democracy.
As for the mysterious whispering echo, they repudiated all talk of
acoustics. It was for them an eerie thing, like the laughter of elves or
the shriek of a banshee.
"Don't say every-day things to me," Anne had instructed Maxwell when he
had first placed her behind a mottled marble pillar before leaving for
the spot where he could speak to her by this unique wireless.
There came to her, therefore, a part of a famous speech; the murmured
words flung back by that strange sounding board rang like a bell:
"Give me liberty or give me death!"
She emerged from her corner, starry-eyed. "It was as if I heard him say
it."
"Perhaps it was he, and I was only a mouthpiece."
"I should think they'd like to come back. Will you come?"