Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/377

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BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK

home. He had a fashion of following up Anne's engagements and putting his car at her disposal. When Amy had vetoed any more adventures at the Capitol he had conceded good-naturedly that she was right. After that he had always included Amy or Ethel in his invitations.

"They are very pretty dragons," he had written to Winifred, "and little Anne is like a princess shut in a tower."

Winifred, reading the letter, had brooded upon it. "He's falling in love. A child like that—she'll spoil his future."

Congress was having night sessions. "If I could only have you up there," Maxwell had said to Anne as he had driven her home from the matinée, with old Molly and Ethel on the back seat. "I should steal you if I dared."

"Please dare."

"Do you mean it?"

"Yes. To-night. Ethel and Amy are going to a Colonial Dames meeting with Molly Winchell. I never go. I hate ancestors."

"I shouldn't let you do it," he hesitated, "but ghosts walk after dark in the Capitol corridors."

"I know," she nodded. "Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln."

"Yes. Then you'll come?"

"Of course."

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