That over Grandma Elsie asked, "Shall we not, now we are here, go into the Government Building and look at the military exhibit?"
"I should like to do so," said Mr. Dinsmore. "In what part of the building is it, Harold?"
"The southeastern, sir. I have been in once, and found many things well worth looking at more than once."
Harold led the way as he spoke, the others following.
The first department they entered contained exhibits of metal work, gun and cartridge-making machines, campaign materials, and battleflags.
All were interesting to the gentlemen, and to some of the ladies also, but to the others and the children the battleflags were far more so than anything else. It was the greatest collection ever seen outside of a government museum; for they were mementoes of all the wars our country has passed through since the settlement of Jamestown, Va.
There were also mountain howitzers mounted on mules, forage wagons, propeller torpedoes, and every kind of camp appliance, garrison equipage, pack saddles, etc. Famous relics, too, such as a beautifully carved bronze cannon captured from the British at Yorktown in 1781, and a great gun called "Long Tom," with which the privateer General Armstrong repelled a British squadron off the shores of the Azores in 1814, and many other souvenirs of American history.
"'Long Tom,'" repeated little Elsie, gazing curiously at the great gun, about which some remark had been made a moment before, "I s'pose there's a story to it. I wish somebody would tell it to Neddie and me."
"You shall hear it one of these times," said her father, "but not here and now;" and with that she was content, for papa's promises were sure to be kept.
"Don't refrain on my account from telling it here and now, captain," said Cousin Ronald with a humorous look and smile. "I'm not so patriotic as to endorse wrong-doing even on the part of Britons."