ou'll see. There will never be a woman in
Washington that can compare with you. You'll be famous within a
fortnight, Laura. Everybody will want to know you. You wait--you'll
see."

Laura wished in her heart that the prophecy might come true; and
privately she even believed it might--for she had brought all the women
whom she had seen since she left home under sharp inspection, and the
result had not been unsatisfactory to her.

During a week or two Washington drove about the city every day with her
and familiarized her with all of its salient features. She was beginning
to feel very much at home with the town itself, and she was also fast
acquiring ease with the distinguished people she met at the Dilworthy
table, and losing what little of country timidity she had brought with
her from Hawkeye. She noticed with secret pleasure the little start of
admiration that always manifested itself in the faces of the guests when
she entered the drawing-room arrayed in evening costume: she took
comforting note of the fact that these guests directed a very liberal
share of their conversation toward her; she observed with surprise, that
famous statesmen and soldiers did not talk like gods, as a general thing,
but said rather commonplace things for the most part; and she was filled
with gratification to discover that she, on the contrary, was making a
good many shrewd speeches and now and then a really brilliant one, and
furthermore, that they were beginning to be repeated in social circles
about the town.

Congress began its sittings, and every day or two Washington escorted her
to the galleries set apart for lady members of the households of Senators
and Representatives. Here was a larger field and a wider competition,
but still she saw that many eyes were uplifted toward her face, and that
first one person and then another called a neighbor's attention to her;
she was not too dull to perceive that the speeches of some of the younger
statesmen were delivered about as much and perhaps more at her than to
the presiding officer; and she was not sorry to see that the dapper young
Senator from Iowa came at once and stood in the open space before the
president's desk to exhibit his feet as soon as she entered the gallery,
whereas she had early learned from common report that his usual custom
was to prop them on his desk and enjoy them himself with a selfish
disregard of other people's longings.

Invitations began to flow in upo