"Sis, we are called to Washington. Get on your bonnet!"
She did not light up as he had expected her to do. "I can't go, George," she replied, decisively and without marked disappointment.
He seemed surprised. "Why not?"
"Because I have my plans all laid for giving my little 'ingines' such a Christmas as they never had, and you must manage to get back in time to be 'Sandy Claws.'"
"I don't see how I can do it. I am to appear before the Committee on Indian Affairs relative to this removal plan, and there may be other business requiring me to remain over the holidays."
"I don't like to have you away. I suppose you'll see Mr. Lawson and Miss Brisbane," she remarked, quietly, after a pause.
"Oh yes," he replied, with an assumption of carelessness. "I imagine Lawson will appear before the committee, and I hope to call on Miss Brisbane—I want to see her paintings." He did not meet his sister's eyes as squarely as was his wont, and her keen glance detected a bit more color in his face than was usual to him. "You must certainly call," she finally said. "I want to know all about how they live."
Many things combined to make this trip to Washington most pleasurable to the soldier. He was weary with six weeks of most intense application to a confused and vexatious situation, and besides he had not been East for several years, and his pocket was filled with urgent invitations to dinner from fellow-officers and co-workers in science, courtesies which he now had opportunity to accept; but back of all and above all was the hope of meeting Elsie Brisbane again. He immediately wrote her a note, telling her of his order to report at the department, and asking permission to call upon her at her convenience.
It was a long ride, but he enjoyed every moment of it. He gave himself up to rest. He went regularly to his meals in the dining-car; he smoked and dreamed and looked out with impersonal, shadowy interest upon the flying fields and the whizzing cities. He slept long hours and rose at will. Such freedom he had known only on the trail; here luxury was combined with leisure. In Chicago a friend met him and they lunched at a luxurious club, and afterwards went for a drive. That night he left the Western metropolis behind and Washington seemed very near.
As the train drew down out of the snows of the hill country into the sunshine and shelter of the Potomac Valley his heart leaped. This was home! Here were the little, whitewashed cabins, the red soil, the angular stone houses—verandaed and shuttered—of his native town. It was pleasant to meet the darkies swarming, chirping like crickets, around the train. They shadowed forth a warmer clime, a less insistent civilization than that of the West, and he was glad of them. They brought up in his mind a thousand memories of his boy-life in an old Maryland village not far from the great city, which still retained its supremacy in his mind. He loved Washington; to him it was the centre of national life.