to prolong the taste. "Isn't this g-r-a-n-d?" he used to ask me.
Sometimes just to ingratiate himself with me, to make me feel he was really just human like myself, he would deliberately use words like "ain't," or he would deliberately mispronounce words, as he used to do with the word "pretty," calling me "you purty thing!"
Once, remembering how someone from Marion had spoken of him to me as not having had a particularly good education, and that only his personality had "put him over" so strongly, I spoke unthinkingly of this to Mr. Harding. My object in telling him was merely to instance the manner of jealousy on the part of some people who were themselves unqualified to fill his position. And he replied, "Well, Nan, none of them is sitting in the United States Senate!" I assured him that that was just what I had told the Marionite who had gossiped about him.
But to return to the visit at the New Willard. Somewhat related to this characteristic visioning in which we both indulged were his many dreams of being able to have me in a "fitting atmosphere," one, he said, which would, as he flatteringly put it, "become your beauty, Nan." He used to tell me that he visioned me always in a "blue mantle,"—a fancy he had never had about anyone else before, he said. Perhaps that was why he seemed to like to see me in blue. . . .
So the trend into which our "serious conversation" drifted—I had hoped Mr. Harding would tell me definitely to go on and have the baby—was not one, in truth, to decide the issue. Therefore our problem was left in the air, or rather for me to solve. The fact that my own fears about myself were in no degree comparable to his own brought him back into the mood in which I loved most to see him, and I left a far calmer Warren Harding upon my departure than I found upon my arrival. I am sure my own sense of comparative serenity was entirely due to the fact that way down deep in my heart I had resolved to have no operation.
