"Trixy!" echoed both ladies.
"Why," said the child, "I only told him all about Mr. Jermyn and Miss Trewman. The lady in the White House told me he was the right man to ask if Mr. Jermyn couldn't go back to New York with us, so I asked him." Then Trixy looked up with the inquiring air she always had when she suspected she had done something wrong, but didn't know what it was.
"Bless me!" exclaimed Kate. "I wonder only that she didn't ask the President himself."
"That's what I was goin' to do," explained Trixy, "but the lady said the other man was the right one, so I asked him."
All three adults stopped and stared fixedly at Trixy, at which the child began to cry; so Trif picked her up and kissed her and told her to "never mind," and Kate stooped and kissed her, and when she lifted her head there were tears in her eyes; so Trif looked hurriedly toward the War Department and said it was good for the public sense of propriety and dignity that the Secretary was out of sight, otherwise it would be just like Kate to kiss him also, as she had kissed the Admiral on a certain occasion.
Kate hurried the party away; she explained later that while looking toward the White House she was sure that she saw the hostess looking through the window at her and smiling at her.
"I declare!" she said, with downcast eyes and cheeks a-flame, "there's no living with Trixy, nor——"
"Nor any living without her—eh?" added Jermyn.
The remainder of the day was the very merriest, so four people said, that any party had ever spent in Washington. Jermyn took his guests to the old chamber of the House of Representatives, and mystified them a few moments with the "whispering gallery" over the Speaker's desk, making Kate his latest victim, despite her appeals to him to be quiet, and his assurances that no one else could hear a word he was saying, although he was forty feet away. Kate became so embarrassed that she suddenly withdrew and Trixy took her place—a change which Jermyn did not notice until he heard a peal of childish laughter, and, stepping forward, saw Kate and Trif standing some steps from the arch and Trixy joining them, and saying: