d by we will all go and take the city by storm."

"Just so," says I, delighted with the plan, which has a touch of
diplomacy in it--and I am anxious to study diplomacy under the
circumstances, you know; "creep before you walk--that is what you mean."

"Just pass as Miss Frost--nothing more--and make your own observations,"
says E. E.

"I will," says I. "It's a good idea. I don't think the people in
Washington were over polite to my great Grand Duke, and I mean to pay
them off, some day."

"That's settled," says E. E. "Now you have no more than time to get
ready."

XXXIV.

IN WASHINGTON.

I hurried back to my boarding-house, packed up that pink silk dress and
things, put on my alpaca dress, tied a thick brown veil over my beehive,
and packed my satchel till it rounded out like an apple dumpling.

We started that night. Cousin D. wanted me to go into a long car where
people slept, he said; but I saw a good many men with carpet-bags going
in there, which looked strange, and though I have great faith in the
integrity of Cousin Dempster, a young lady in my peculiar circumstances
cannot be too particular; I declined to go into that curtained, long
car, and sat up in a high-backed chair all night, wide awake as a
whip-poor-will, for Cousin Dempster was on the next seat sleeping like a
mole, and his head more than once came down so close to my shoulder
that it made me shudder for fear that people might not know that he was
my cousin's husband, and snap up my character before I got to
Washington.

Well, at last we got out of that train, I stood with both feet in the
heart of the nation, and a great, flat, straggling heart it is.

"There it is--there is the Capitol," says Cousin Dempster. "Look how
beautifully the sunshine bathes the dome and the white marble walls."

I looked upward--there, rising up over a lot of tall trees and long,
green embankments, rose a great building, white as snow, and large as
all out-doors. The sun was just up, and had set all its windows on fire,
and a great, stout woman perched on the top of a thing they call the
dome--which is like a mammoth wash-bowl turned wrong side up--looked as
if she was tired out with carrying so much on her head, and longed to
jump down and have a good time with the other bronze-colored girls that
show themselves off, just like white folks inside the building.

Well, later that day, I went right up to that heap of marble, which in
its length and bread