“I am very glad you have, Mr. Meyers,” Harriet answered coldly, with a slight catch in her voice.  “But I am certainly sorry I asked you to lend any of it to me.  Will you never refer to this conversation again, and take me home as soon as you can?  I don’t think it is worth while for me even to refuse your offer.  But please remember that my affection is something that mere money cannot buy.”  Harriet’s tone was so scornful that the young man winced.  He could think of nothing to reply, and turned his car around in shame-faced silence.

Harriet too was very quiet.  She would have liked to tell her companion what she truly thought of him, how coarse and ill-bred he was, but she set her lips and remained silent.  She did not wish to make an enemy of Charlie Meyers.  After that day’s experience, she would simply drop him from her list of acquaintances and have nothing more to do with him.

Stupid though he was, the discomfited young man felt Harriet’s silent contempt.  He wanted to apologize to her, to explain, to say a thousand things.  But he was too dense to know just what he should say.  It was better for him that he did wait to make his apology until a later day, when Harriet’s anger had in a measure cooled and she was even more miserable and confused than she was at that time.

“I am awfully sorry, Harriet,” Charlie Meyers stumbled over his words as he helped her out of his machine.  “You know I didn’t exactly mean to refuse your request.  I’ll be awfully glad to—­”

But Harriet’s curt good-bye checked his apologetic speech, and he turned and drove swiftly away.

CHAPTER XIV

“Grant no favors!”

“Mrs. Wilson’s tea is at four o’clock, girls, remember,” Harriet announced a day or so later, looking up from the note she was writing.  “Are you actually going sight-seeing again to-day before the reception?  Truly, I never imagined such energy!”

“Oh, come, Harriet Hamlin, don’t be sarcastic,” Ruth rejoined.  “If you had not lived so long in Washington you would be just as much interested in everything as the ‘Automobile Girls’ are.  But Bab and I are the only ones to go sight-seeing to-day.  Mollie isn’t feeling well, and Grace is staying to console her.  We shall be back in plenty of time.  Why don’t you lie down for a while!  You look so tired.”

“Oh, I am all right,” Harriet answered gently.  “Good-bye, children.  Be good and remember you have promised not to be late.”

Ruth and Bab were highly anxious for a walk and talk together, and they had a special enterprise on hand for this afternoon.  Bab had received a mysterious summons from her newspaper friend, Marjorie Moore.  The note had asked Bab to bring Ruth, and to come to the Visitors’ Gallery in the Senate Chamber at an appointed time.  Marjorie Moore chose this strange meeting place because she had a “special story” of the Senate to write for her paper and was obliged to be in the gallery.