They boarded a street car and went to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, where they spent an interesting afternoon touring the immense plant, the best equipped of its kind in the world.
The recital of their adventures at the dinner table that night provoked mingled merriment and concern.
"Never mind, it will teach 'em self-reliance," Mr. Littell insisted, when his wife protested that the girls would have to be more closely chaperoned on subsequent trips. "Falling into scrapes is the finest lesson-book ever opened to the heedless."
Sunday morning the girls and Mrs. Littell motored to Washington and attended services in one of the fine old churches. There they had an excellent opportunity to observe the President of the United States and his wife, who, as Libbie said disappointedly at dinner that day, "looked just like anybody."
"I hope you didn't expect them to get up and make a speech?" teased her uncle. "However, I'm glad you saw them, my dear. A country where the head of the government 'looks just like anybody' and goes to church as simply and reverently as any one else is the finest in the world."
Early in the new week Bobby announced that it was their duty, meaning the girl contingent, to go into the city and pay a call upon a friend of the Littells' who was staying with an aunt at one of the large hotels. They had met them at church, and a tentative promise had been given, which Bobby was determined should be kept.
"If it wasn't for me this family would have no manners," she scolded. "Now, I don't like Ruth Gladys Royal a bit better than you do, Louise; but I hope I know what is the right thing to do."
Mrs. Littell, who was hopelessly unfashionable as far as conventions that were merely polite went, announced serenely that she was going to her sewing circle and that if the girls chose they might go calling. Her engagement stood.
"Mother thinks Ruth Royal is snobbish," commented Bobby, as her mother serenely departed for the little sewing circle of the country church in which she maintained a keen interest and which she virtually supported. "As far as that goes, I think she is. But Louise told her we'd come and call on her, and I think a promise ought to be kept."
"Well, I'll go with you if Betty will," said Louise. "I don't see why you pick out a perfectly lovely afternoon to martyr us all in, but if it must be done, let's get it over with. Esther and Libbie have wheedled dad into taking them to the movies, and I suppose we can go in the car with them."