"I will," says I. "It's a good idea. I don't think the people in Washington were over polite to my great Grand Duke, and I mean to pay them off, some day."
"That's settled," says E. E. "Now you have no more than time to get ready."
XXXIV.
IN WASHINGTON.
I HURRIED back to my boarding-house, packed up that pink silk dress and things, put on my alpaca dress, tied a thick brown veil over my beehive, and packed my satchel till it rounded out like an apple dumpling.
We started that night. Cousin D. wanted me to go into a long car where people slept, he said; but I saw a good many men with carpet-bags going in there, which looked strange, and though I have great faith in the integrity of Cousin Dempster, a young lady in my peculiar circumstances cannot be too particular; I declined to go into that curtained, long car, and sat up in a high-backed chair all night, wide awake as a whip-poor-will, for Cousin Dempster was on the next seat sleeping like a mole, and his head more than once came down so close to my shoulder that it made me shudder for fear that people might not know that he was my cousin's husband, and snap up my character before I got to Washington.
Well, at last we got out of that train, I stood with both feet in the heart of the nation, and a great, flat, straggling heart it is.
"There it is—there is the Capitol," says Cousin Dempster. "Look how beautifully the sunshine bathes the dome and the white marble walls."
I looked upward—there, rising up over a lot of tall trees and long, green embankments, rose a great building, white as snow, and large as all out-doors. The sun was just up, and had set all its windows on fire, and a great, stout woman perched on the top of a thing they call the dome—which is like a mammoth wash-bowl turned wrong side up—looked as if she was tired out with carrying so much on her head, and longed to jump down and have a good time with the other bronze-colored girls that show themselves off, just like white folks inside the building.