Helen Hinckley, with a pleasing smile, advanced with outstretched hands to the Governor, and in her charming voice, said: “By which name I have the pleasure to present myself to your Honor now.”
The Governor took her two beautiful hands into his own, and as he looked into her open countenance, and beautiful eyes, he realized that at last he had met his fate.
CHAPTER VII.
THE PRESIDENT SURPRISED.
It was the intention of the Presidential party to spend one day and night in Chihuahua, and to leave the following morning before eleven o’clock for Saltillo, where they would spend a few days visiting her large and famous educational institutions, of which the United States is justly proud.
But instead of carrying out the plan for the tour, he sent a message, saying his visit would be delayed, to the president of the most renowned of the ten schools, which had made the beautiful city of Saltillo, away up in the Sierra Madre mountains, five thousand feet above the sea level, the envy of all pedagogues all over the East and North. The hub of learning was no longer said to be in the old, puritanical town of Boston, as was credited to it a hundred and fifty years ago.
A strange shifting of scenes had taken place, not only in the fall of Boston from its educational pedestal, but in the shifting of the axis of the earth, changing the positions of the poles, and creating in different parts of the world a different climate from what had been in years gone by, as well as different animal, vegetable life and mineral deposits.
The great school, “For Hidden Thought,” of which Francisco de Urdiñola was president, was the institution of greatest note in Saltillo, and the only one of its kind in America. It was to the president of this University that the President of the United States sent a message, saying that the date of his arrival in Saltillo would be delayed.
President Mortingo had a short conversation with Governor Lehumada at the close of the banquet the previous evening, in which the President declared his intentions of becoming a “subject” the following day, to see if he could fathom the mysteries of the evening.
He made an appointment also to meet the child, Catalina Martinet, at the Governor’s home, at nine o’clock, after which meeting he would go to the studio of the scientist, Guillermo Gonzales.
As the President sped through the beautiful streets of Chihuahua, from the Mexican Annex, to the palatial home of Governor Lehumada, his thoughts travelled with surprising rapidity from one occurrence to another of the last evening.