Magnus sat back in great gloom, and declared that June was "fizzling out."
"I suppose the next word will be that Viola and Rose have some sort of a previous at the North Pole," he said.
XLVII
MRS. CONGRESSMAN
Pure was her mind and simple her intent,
Good all she sought and kindness all she meant.
—Crabbe.
But no such climax followed. The girls wrote that they were to leave home on such a day, in charge of the wife of that very Congressman who had given Magnus his appointment. A true woman of the world in some things, but kindly, and not wanting in sense and tact. People said she liked uniforms herself, and was glad of a train of girls because it drew on a train of cadets. But neither thing was so very exceptional and unheard of that people needed to be hard on her. And she chose her girls well; always, if she could, some hid-away damsel whose one chance of getting to the Point this might be. And now, when the boy owed his place to her husband's good offices, it was her delight to take his sisters. The one stipulation was that she should have her own way about the bills.
"I must have a clear mind," she said, "and stop when I choose, and where I choose, or the trip won't be a speck of good. It's nobody's business how I manage my affairs, and you chits needn't strike in to be the first."
So in this lady's ample care Rose and Violet made the long journey, and enjoyed every scrap of it. The meals in the dining car, and (I'm afraid) the bunks in the so-called sleeper; even the small delays, for then they could look out to better advantage; and Mrs. Congressman voted them the two best girls she had ever taken anywhere. "Always ready for breakfast," she said, "and always willing to wait. It was as good as music to hear them laugh when we had to switch off on the side track, or when folks jammed past them to dinner; it sweetened the whole car; curled everybody's feathers...."
It was true, and I think would have been, even on a journey not into "Fairyland," though of course that helped. But the two were very quiet in their eager looking; the laugh and the exclamation were low-toned and well-bred. They asked sensible questions, and not too many even of them. Only when they got talking of Magnus, then indeed, the words came, with such sparkles and dimples and exultation, that Mrs. Congressman began to think her husband had done a bright thing for the country, when he gave that young soldier his place. But no one else in the car found out that they had a brother at West Point, and were on their way to see him; nor that their escort was the wife of an Hon. M. C.; such cheap fame our two girls had not learned to seek.
And thus it was a delightful little party that after some hours of rest, and a late breakfast, bestowed themselves in a palace car of the 11.30 train, and went swaying and swinging up the river.