When the Cheering Stopped Read Free Page B

introduce Helen to the older friend of the girl he would shortly marry. Grayson’s future wife was Alice Gertrude Gordon, who was called Altrude by her friends, and Altrude’s friend was a forty-two-year-old widow who owned a Washington jewelry shop left her by her late husband. The shop was a profitable one and ran itself with little aid from its owner, who was able to travel widely, take a great interest in clothes, particularly Parisfrocks, and drive around in an electric automobile which, she said, was the first ever owned and operated by a Washington woman. She lived alone save for two maids in a house on 20th Street, N.W., at New Hampshire Avenue. She was tall and imposing and had a beautiful smile and appealing dimples. Her family was one of the oldest in Virginia and her father had been a plantation owner, Confederate officer, lawyer and judge, but she had been brought up in the impoverished post-Civil War South and had but two years of formal education. She was a non-political person, not active in Society or charitable circles, and in almost twenty years of Washington residence had never been inside the White House. Her name was Edith Bolling Galt.
    Miss Bones and Mrs. Galt soon became friends, going for outings in Mrs. Galt’s electric (which she drove like an absolute madwoman) and for long afternoon walks along the paths in Rock Creek Park. The Galt home was only a few blocks from the park, and after their walks they would make for its library, where a fire would be lit and tea served. One day in March, after a long hike over muddy paths, Helen Bones invited her friend to come for tea in the White House instead of in the 20th Street library. “Oh, I couldn’t do that; my shoes are a sight, and I should be taken for a tramp,” Mrs. Galt said.
    â€œYes, you can,” said Miss Bones. “There is not a soul there. Cousin Woodrow is playing golf with Dr. Grayson and we will go right upstairs in the elevator and you shall see no one.” They went to the White House and to the second floor. As they stepped out of the elevator, they saw coming around the corner, attired in golfing clothes and muddy boots, the President of the United States and his physician. Mrs. Galt had time to note that the golf suits were tatty and not smart at all, and time to think to herself that if her own shoes were not clean at least she was wearing a Worth gown and a nice tricot hat. Then she was being introduced and Helen Bones was explaining that they had been for a walk and were going to have tea. “I think you might ask us,” Grayson said, and it was agreed that the men would change while the women had their shoes cleaned up. They would then all meet in the Oval Room.
    They sat down to tea and when they finished the President took Mrs. Galt to see a desk made from the timbers of the British ship Resolute which, icebound and abandoned in the Arctic, was found by an American ship and returned to England, where Queen Victoria had the desk made for President Rutherford B. Hayes. Then Edith Galt went home. In the short time she was with the President, her cheerful manner made him laugh twice, making Helen Bones wonder if she was hearing right. He had laughed. “I can’t say that I foresaw in the first minute what was going to happen,” Helen Bones said later. “It may have taken ten minutes.”
    A few days later Mrs. Galt came to dinner at the White House, and a few days after that went riding with the two cousins, she and Helen sitting in the back of the car while the President sat by the driver. He seemed very tired and hardly said a word while his cousin and her friend chattered away. Around five-thirty they drove back to the White House and he asked the guest if she would not join them for dinner. There was something plaintive in the way he told her he and Cousin Helen were entirely alone. After they ate he seemed far more lively and the three of them sat around a fire talking