they came, these women who marched for a Cause, heads up,
eyes shining. There had been something to bear at the other end of the
line where the crowd had pressed in upon them, and there had been no
adequate police protection, but they were ready for martyrdom, if need
be, perhaps, some of them would even welcome it.

But Grace was no fanatic. She met them afterward, and told of her
experience gleefully.

"You should have been with me, Mary," she said.

Porter rose in his wrath. "What has bewitched you women?" he demanded.
"Do you all believe in it?"

And now Leila piped, "I don't want to march. I don't want to do the
things that men do. I want to have a nice little house, and cook and
sew, and take care of somebody."

They all laughed. But Porter surveyed Leila with satisfaction.

"Barry's a lucky fellow," he said.

"Oh, Porter," Mary reproached him, as he helped her down from her high
seat on the stand.

"Well, he is. Leila couldn't keep her nice little house any better
than you, Mary. But the thing is that she _wants_ to keep it for
Barry. And you--you want to march on the street--and laugh--at love."

She surveyed him coldly. "That shows just how much you understand me,"
she said, and turned her back on him and accepted an invitation to ride
home in the Jeliffes' car.

On the day of the Inauguration, the same party had seats on the stand
opposite the one in front of the White House from which the President
reviewed the troops.

And it was upon the President that Cousin Patty riveted her attention.
To be sure her little feet beat time to the music, and she flushed and
glowed as the soldiers swept by, and the horses danced, and the people
cheered. But above and beyond all these things was the sight of the
man, who in her eyes represented the resurrection of the South--the man
who should sway it back to its old level in the affairs of the nation.

"I couldn't have dreamed," she emphasized, as she talked it over that
night with Mary, "of anything so satisfying as his smile. I shall
always think of him as smiling out in that quiet way of his at the
people."

Mary had a vision of another Inauguration and of another President who
had smiled--a President who had captured the hearts of his countrymen
as perhaps this scholar never would. It was at the shrine of that
strenuous and smiling President that Mary still worshiped. But they
were both great men--it was for the future to tell which would l