"Oh--yes!" cried Keineth, then she stopped short. "But--it wouldn't have to be a secret, would it?"
The President broke into a hearty laugh. "No, indeed, my dear!" Then, more seriously, "You were very brave to help us guard so carefully his journeying. It was necessary that it should be kept a secret because in every land where he went there were bitter enemies to the work he was trying to do--enemies who, if they had had one word of the mission upon which he was going about, would have done everything within their power to defeat its purpose, even to taking his life without one moment's hesitation! Keineth, this is a funny world. It is made up of big nations and small nations and they struggle against one another like so many bad, heedless boys fighting in an alley."
"I know!" cried Keineth, bright-eyed. "When they ought to be living like nice families in a quiet street, each one keeping its own yard clean from rubbish and the doorsteps washed." She used her father's words with careful precision.
President Wilson turned to John Randolph. "The child has described it, exactly! What an ideal! Do you think we'll ever reach it?" Then, to Keineth, "And that is the mission that took your father abroad--to lay before the peoples of those other lands this plan of democracy; to show them the picture of how we all--as nations--might live as you have described it, like thrifty families on a clean-kept street, some in finer houses than others, perhaps, but each one with its door-step clean and its corners well cleared out. Well--well, in your lifetime you may come to it, child. And when you do--remember that the way was opened by the message your father carried!"
They talked a little longer of things Keineth could not understand, though she listened with rapt attention while her father spoke of the Emperor of Japan and the Czar of Russia as though they were just ordinary men!
President Wilson walked with them to the door; he shook hands and begged them to come again! "I should like some day to show you around Washington myself, Miss Keineth," he said, patting her shoulder. Then as they walked out toward the street gates Keineth turned back and saw him watching from the open door. She waved her hand impulsively and he lifted his in a farewell salute.
Keineth drew in a very deep breath: as Peggy would say, "Who _could_ believe that she was little Keineth Randolph?"