and then softly give central the number. I was always afraid mother might hear me. Often the maid answered the telephone. When this occurred I would ask for Mrs. Harding. Sometimes she herself would answer. Once, I remember, mother came in while I was calling and demanded to know to whom I was talking. When I said "Mrs. Harding," she took the receiver and talked with her herself. It may have been that very time when Mrs. Harding informed mother that she could tell Nan that so far as "Warren" was concerned, "distance lends enchantment." But there were those rare times when he himself answered the telephone, when he would say upon my telling him it was "Nan Britton," "Well, how-do-you-do, Miss Britton; and how are you?" in that silvery voice I so loved, and I would immediately become so confused and tremble so I thought he must sense it all from the other end of the wire.
I knew the number of the Harding car by heart and could spot it blocks away. One time I had occasion to go to the Union Station to meet someone and when I reached there I saw the Harding Stevens-Duryea parked outside. The Harding dog then was a bull, rather a fearsome looking animal, and he was always in the car whenever it was out. I was so full of love for Mr. Harding that it extended to any possession of his, and when I observed that dignified creature sitting alert in the front seat alone, I walked over to the car to pet him. But he was "on his job" and snapped at me so fiercely that I backed off with all possible speed. Thereafter I confined my manifestations of affection to the Hardings themselves.
About this time we were asked in school by Miss Harding to write an essay on Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, the particular chapter we had to cover being "The Combat with the Templar." I think we were given something like a
