to find myself cherishing the nice things he said about our home town.
"What would your sister, Daisy Harding, say if she could see us together?" I exclaimed to him.
He laughed whimsically, evidently thinking rather of his wife.
"What would Florence Harding say, I want to know!" he answered.
At Mr. Harding's suggestion I registered in Connersville at the McFarlan Hotel, where he also stopped, as "Miss E. N. Christian," or "Elizabeth N. Christian." Christian was Mr. Harding's secretary's name—George B. Christian—and Mr. Harding said he thought it would be "a good joke" to use his secretary's name. My father and mother must have known the Christians in Marion, and when in high school I knew the older gentleman, George Christian's father, "Colonel" as he was called, because he used to take us girls to the drug store and buy us sodas.
Mr. Harding intended to take me to Rushville that evening, but when he knocked on my door I was in the bathroom down the hall, and as his car was waiting for him he could not wait for me. So I was left to roam around the little village and wait for his return. There, too, I bought a postcard picture of the McFarlan Hotel "for remembrance."
He returned about ten-thirty or eleven. I was sitting in the lobby of the hotel, one of the typical lobbies of a small town hotel, with the chairs lined up before the front window. As he came in he ignored me altogether and I smiled to myself. We had planned to take the midnight train into Chicago, and he had told me that afternoon on the interurban that we would get a berth together if I agreed. But it had really been left undecided.
A taxi was announced about eleven-forty-five and I picked up my bag and went out. Mr. Harding was at my side in a moment. The several politicians who escorted Mr. Harding to the cab did not know of course that we were known to each other, and ostensibly we were not. He spoke up, "I am catch-
