Keineth sighed. "It doesn't seem right to be so happy when others are not," she said, troubled.
"But remember what she said--because you are happy is the one bright spot in Madame Henri's life! So it may be with others; you can always help someone."
"You couldn't do anything else at the Lees'," broke in Keineth, "because Aunt Nellie is so kind and unselfish that we children are terribly ashamed to be anything else! Daddy--" Keineth stopped short; for the first time it crossed her mind that now that her daddy had come back her visit at the Lees' would end. "Where will we live now, Daddy?"
He waited a moment before he answered.
"I am going to ask you to decide that for yourself, Keineth." Keineth remembered then the night her father had made her decide between Aunt Josephine and the Lees! How hard it had been!
John Randolph led her to a bench. "Let's sit down here and talk. I'll show you two pictures, Keineth, and you shall choose. You heard what the President said; he has asked me to be in his Cabinet! That is a great honor--perhaps the highest honor that may ever come to me!"
"You'll be more than a soldier that doesn't wear a uniform?"
Her father smiled at her quaint phrasing. "Yes, much more! But, besides the honor and the work of the position it will mean this to us--we will have to take a house here in Washington and live in such a way that we can entertain many, many guests. My time will never be my own, for there will be countless social demands besides the duties of the office--I will be able to spend very little time with my little girl! But she will not mind that because she will have ever so many new friends and new things to do, too. And we're too simple to know how to live such a life, so there's only one thing that'd happen--" Keineth was making tiny circles in the soft grass with the toe of her shoe. She had listened intently, now she interrupted quickly: "Aunt Josephine!"
"Yes--Aunt Josephine would have to come down to show us how!"
For some reason Keineth did not like the picture--and yet Daddy had said it was a great honor! But Aunt Josephine--