ANOTHER thing that had upset Vassar’s equanimity was the baffling quality of Virginia Holland’s character. The more honestly he had tried to approach her in friendly compromise the more bristling her mental resistance had become. She held him at arms’ length personally.

He was surprised at her final decision to go to the Armory. No doubt only an uncompromising honesty had caused her to fulfil a promise. Clearly she was bored.

As a matter of fact she was anything but bored. She was lashing herself at every step with reproaches at her idiotic inconsistency in accompanying an East Side politician on a fool’s errand. No doubt the whole thing was a scheme to pose before enraptured constituents. Why had she consented to come? She asked herself the question a hundred times and finally accepted the weak lie that she was studying his eccentricities to make his defeat the more sure.

With each moment of her association she had become more and more clearly conscious of his charm. Its strength and its antagonism were equally appealing. It would be sweet to demonstrate her own power in his defeat at the polls and then make up to him by confessing her admiration.

She began to receive striking evidence of his popularity. At every street-corner and from almost every door came a friendly nod or wave of a hand.

Schultz, the fat German who kept a delicatessen store on the corner, waved to him from the doorway.

“Mein Frau und der kids—all dere, gov’ner. I vish I could be!”

On the next block Brodski gripped his hand and whispered a word of cheer.

“They all seem to know you down here, Mr. Congressman,” Virginia laughed.

“Yes, it’s my only hope—if we fight—”

“You’ll need help if we do,” she answered quietly.

He didn’t like the tone of menace in her words. There was no bluster about it. There was a ring of earnestness that meant business.

“Perhaps I’m going to win you to my cause before you know it,” he ventured. “I’m going to show you something today that’s really worth while—”

“Meaning, of course,” she interrupted, “that the cause in which I am at present expending my thought and energy is not worth while—”

“I didn’t say that!” he protested. “And I most humbly apologize if I implied as much—”

“All the same you think it, sir—”

She stopped short in amazement at the sight of her brother Billy standing straight and fine beside Zonia at the door of the old Armory, a marshal’s sash across his shoulder, arrayed in a captain’s uniform of the Boy Scouts of America.

Zonia grasped her outstretched hand in loyal greeting, her eyes sparkling with pride at her uncle’s triumphant march beside her heroine.

Virginia’s gaze fixed Billy’s beaming countenance.

“Well, Mr. Sunny Jim!” she exclaimed, “will you kindly give an account of yourself. How long have you been a marshal of the empire?”

“Oh, ever so long, Virginia—Mr. Vassar didn’t know I was your brother, that’s all. I’m a captain now. I didn’t let you know ’cause I thought you might raise a rumpus. Father and mother know. They don’t care. I like it.”

He turned abruptly to Vassar and saluted.

“Everything ready, sir!”

Virginia shook her head and smiled at Zonia. She too wore a marshal’s sash.

“I want you to meet some of the mothers, Miss Holland,” she whispered eagerly. “I made a lot of them go to our meetings.”

“With pleasure, dear.” She smiled at Vassar. “We’ll take occasion to mend some of our fences in this benighted district today!”

The young Congressman turned his guest over to his niece and hurried away with Billy to inspect the assignment of kids for the ceremonies of the Flag.

Virginia was surprised to find the hall packed with women and children, more than a thousand, of all ages and nationalities. They were chattering like magpies—a babel of foreign tongues—German, Italian, Polish, Bohemian, Russian, Greek, Yiddish.

“I must introduce you first,” Zonia whispered, “to my favorite mother, an Italian with the cutest little darling boy you ever saw. She heard you speak in the Square—”

She darted into the crowd and led forth a slender, dark-haired young Italian mother with a beautiful boy of five clinging to her skirts.

“Miss Holland, this is my good friend Angela Benda and Mr. Tommaso!”

Angela bowed and blushed.

“Ah, Signorina, I hear you speak so fine—so beautiful! I make my man Tommaso vote for you or breaka his neck! I done tell him so too—”

“And did he promise?”

“Si, si, signorina—I mak him—”

Virginia stooped and gathered the child in her arms. Shy at first, he put his hand at last on her shining hair, touched it gracefully, and looked into her face with grave wide eyes.

Virginia pressed him suddenly to her heart and kissed him.

“You glorious little creature!” she cried. The act was resistless. In all her career she had never before done so silly and undignified a thing in public. She blushed at her folly. What crazy spell could she be under today? She asked the question with a new sense of uneasy annoyance as her eyes swept the room in search of the hero of the occasion.

Vassar could scarcely walk for the crowds of joyous women and children who pressed about him and tried to express their love and pride in his leadership.

A fight suddenly broke out between the Benda and Schultz kids close beside Virginia.

Zonia tried in vain to separate them. Vassar saved the situation by picking up Angela’s boy by his suspenders, and the German kid by the seat of his pants. He lifted them bodily out of the scene and carried them into a quiet corner.

Virginia laughed heartily.

Vassar demanded mutual apologies.

“He called me ‘Sausage,’ ” complained the Schultz kid.

“He calla me a Dago,” answered the Italian.

“Now salute each other with a handshake!” Billy commanded. “And remember that you’re good Americans.”

“He made them both take off their caps and yell:

“Hurrah for Uncle Sam!”

Virginia looked about the old hall with increasing amazement at the effective way in which the interior had been decorated. Around the walls in graceful festoons the beautiful red, white and blue emblems hung an endless riot of color. From the ceiling they fell in soft, billowing waves stirred by the breezes from the open windows. The eye of every child kindled with delight on entering.

The exercises began with a song.

A band of six pieces led them. Everybody rose and sang one stanza. John Vassar first wrote it in big plain letters on the blackboard where all could read:

MY COUNTRY, ’TIS OF THEE,
SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY,
OF THEE, I SING!

They sang it with a fervor that stirred Virginia’s soul.

Vassar took the chair as presiding officer and directed the exercises, Billy acting as his chief lieutenant to Virginia’s continuous amusement.

“Now, children, give me the cornerstone of the American nation—let’s get that in place first. Now everybody! All together!”

From the crowd came a shout that stirred the big flags in the ceiling:

“ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL!”

Again he wrote it on the blackboard and asked them to repeat it.

They did it with a will.

“Now, children,” he said, “I’ve a distinguished artist here today who gives us this valuable hour of his useful life to draw a picture on the board. Watch him closely and don’t forget the message.”

With quick, sure stroke the cartoonist drew a wonderful symbolic Stairway of Life for the American child.

On the left of the scene appeared Uncle Sam holding the lamp of knowledge to light the way to success for the crowd of eager boys and girls at the bottom of the hill. In sharp outline he drew the steps upon which they might mount—each step a book they could master. The first step was marked—Primer, the next First Reader and then came Elementary Arithmetic, Second Reader, Grammar, Geography, History, Physiology, Rhetoric, Algebra, Physics, Latin, Greek, Geometry, Political Economy and Trigonometry. The last step faded out in the blazing light of the Sun of Success at the top of the hill. He drew the figures of little boys and girls on the lower rounds, bigger boys and girls on the middle ones, young men and women mounting the hill crest. At the bottom of the cartoon he wrote:

“Uncle Sam invites all his children of every race and kindred and tongue to come up higher!”

“Now, once more, children,” Vassar cried, “tell me on what this country’s greatness rests?”

Again the shout came as from a single throat:

“All men are created equal!”

“Good! Now give me the passwords!”

“Liberty!”

“Equality!”

“Fraternity!”

The three shouts came as three salvos from a battery of artillery.

On another blackboard he wrote the words in huge capitals and left them standing.

“Now, children, I want you to think for just one minute every day of your life what it means to be a citizen of this mighty free Democracy—where men are learning to govern themselves better than any king has ever done it for them. I want you to realize that the inspired founders of this nation made it the hope and refuge of the oppressed of all the world. And I want you to love it with all your heart—”

He lifted his hands and the crowd rose singing “The Star Spangled Banner.” They sang it with a swing and lilt Virginia had never heard before. For the first time in her life it had meaning. Her eyes unconsciously filled with tears.

At a wave of Vassar’s hand the crowd sank to their seats.

Vassar stooped over the platform and motioned to Angela to hand to him her boy.

The mother proudly passed the child to the leader. Vassar lifted the smiling youngster in his arms and held him high. In ringing tones he cried:

“Don’t forget, my friends, that the humblest boy here today may become the president of the United States!”

A ringing cheer swept the crowd.

Vassar passed the child back to the mother and continued his address. The rest of it was lost on Angela. A new light suddenly flashed in her brown eyes.

She sat down, flushed, and rose again. Tommaso tugged at her dress and begged her to sit down. Her soul was too full. The act of the speaker was a divine omen. She must know if he really meant that her little Tommaso might be the president of a great free nation. The thought was too big. Her heart was bursting. She............