deep green coolness of the forest which rose majestically around it. And most of all did it amaze me to see served to us a luncheon as delicately appointed as one might get at the Plaza or Ritz-Carlton.
When we arrived in Washington that night about eleven o'clock, we found Mr. Votaw waiting up for us, having received word from Mrs. Votaw as to when we would arrive. Daisy Harding had told me that her brother-in-law, Heber Herbert Votaw, had been very ill, and one needed only to glance at him to know it. I had seen Mr. Votaw only a few times, and these occasions dated back to my high school days, when he and his wife had returned from Burma on a furlough, and it occurred to me as I looked at him closely for the first time that night, that he might be described as being handsome in much the same way that George Christian was considered handsome. He had very dark hair and eyes that laughed, and teeth of flashing whiteness, and he was of pleasing height and bearing. On meeting him again after these years I liked Mr. Votaw immediately, with one reservation. It seemed to me his voice was unpleasantly loud. I decided it had been abnormally developed because of his wife's difficulty in hearing, and was not at all his own natural voice. And further, I concluded that even if he were inclined to be irritable, his late illness and resultant weakness were sufficient grounds. I remember when I was passing through the most trying months of my nervous breakdown following Elizabeth Ann's birth, I used to manifest a disposition of irritability both in my voice and actions which I may, in justice to my true self, disclaim as a part of my nature when I am physically sound.
Yet somehow, despite these explanations to myself, I could not reconcile the irritancy of Mr. Votaw's voice, no matter to what it might be attributable, with the meekness and patience which should mark a missionary of religion.
