“It’s a familiar sight,” she said, and Vernon thought that he had a clue at last. She must know the prairies.
“It is just like a sunset at sea,” she added.
When they had driven back to the town and Vernon had left her at the hotel, he turned to drive to the livery stable.
“By George!” he said, suddenly, speaking to himself. “I haven’t read Amelia’s letter!”
He fumbled in his coat pocket.
VIII
MISS GREENE’S predictions were all realized in the sensation Vernon’s speech created. The newspapers gave whole columns to it and illustrated their accounts with portraits of Vernon and of Maria Greene. Vernon thought of the pleasure Amelia must find in his new fame, and when he wrote to her he referred briefly but with the proper modesty to his remarkable personal triumph, and then waited for her congratulations.
The legislative session was drawing to a close; the customary Friday adjournment was not taken, but sessions were held that day and on Saturday, for the work was piling up, the procrastinating legislators having left it all for the last minute.
The week following would see House and Senate sweltering in shirt sleeves and night sessions, and now, if a bill were to become law it was necessary that its sponsor stay, as it were, close beside it, lest in the mighty rush of the last few days it be lost.
Vernon, by virtue of his speech, had assumed the championship of the woman-suffrage resolution, and he felt it necessary to forego his customary visit to Chicago that week and remain over Sunday in Springfield. He devoted the day to composing a long letter to Miss Greene, in which he described the situation in detail, and suggested that it would be well for her, if possible, to come down to Springfield on Monday and stay until the resolution had been adopted. He gave her, in closing, such pledges of his devotion to the cause of womankind that she could hardly resist any appeal he might make for her presence and assistance.