The lecturer points your attention to another house.
"The Dolly Madison Hotel, for women only," he announces. "No men or dogs allowed above the first floor. The only male thing around the premises is the mail-box and it is—"
He has gone too far. You fix your steely glance of disapproval upon him and he withers. He drops his megaphone and whispers into your ear once again:
"I hate to do it," he apologizes, "but I have to. The boss says:—'Give 'em wit an' humor, Harry, or back you goes to your old job on a Fourteenth street car.' Think of givin' that bunch wit an' humor! Look at that old sobersides next to you, still a-worryin' about that statue!"
Wit and humor it is then. Wit and humor and wealth and fashion. It almost seems too little to offer a mere dollar for such joys. You make the turn around the drive in back of the White House and you miss the Taft cow—which in other days was wont to feast upon the greensward. You ask the lecturer what became of Mr. Taft's cow.
"She was deceased," he solemnly explained, "a year before his term was up—of the colic."
And of that somewhat ambiguous statement you can make your own translation.
*****
The sight-seeing car stops at the little group of hotels in Pennsylvania avenue, near the site of the old Baltimore & Potomac railroad station. The lecturer begins to use his megaphone to expatiate upon the advantages of a trip to Arlington which is about to begin, but Arlington is too sweetly serious a memorial to be explored by a humorous motor-car. And—in the offing—you are seeing something else. Another car of the line upon which you have been voyaging is moored at the very point from which you started, not quite two hours ago. Upon that car sit the same two young black-haired ladies. Two young men are climbing up to sit beside them. Your gaze wanders. On the rival car across the way the two very blondes in black are still holding giggling conversation. Your suspicions are roused.
Do they ever ride?