Clover regarded her helplessly, but she could not help smiling too. "I don't know whether we should be outraging conventionality or not," she repeated. "He will be coming back again in a little while. If only Jeanie hadn't deserted us. It was such an inconvenient season for her to be overwhelmed with homesickness, but she said it was the first time that she had not been really needed here."
"You remind me of Iolanthe," said Mildred wickedly. "I couldn't help thinking of it all the time Strephon was here." And then she sang:—
"'I wouldn't say a word that could be construed as injurious,
But to find a mother younger than her son is very curious,
And that's the sort of mother who is usually spurious;
Tara diddle, tara diddle, tol lol lay.'"
The color rose under Clover's clear skin as she joined reluctantly in her sister's laugh. "Perhaps we had better procure a dragon," she suggested.
"Oh, wait a little," returned Mildred, loath to alter their present mode of life.
But Jack, before he left, had agreed to call for his friends on the morning of May 1st to take them to see the opening exercises in the new city whose completed splendor they had not before beheld.
The three walked down through the grounds in the dull gray weather, and joined the half million of souls who waited in the Court of Honor to see President Cleveland touch the electric button.
Clover gazed at the white magnificence of architecture, and felt a thrill at the solemn stillness pervading all, which the fine orchestral music only accented.
"It seems to me like the story of Galatea," she said to Jack. "We are waiting to see the breath of life breathed into the statue."
Van Tassel looked down the Grand Basin to where the heroic Republic stood veiled in white from the eyes of men. The low-hanging sky hung its pall above all.