At Washington she had a signal triumph.  The day of her speech found the hall in which the convention was held crowded with a company including many distinguished persons—­among them, the President of the United States.  Kate had expected to suffer rather badly from stage fright, but a sense of her opportunity gave her courage.  She talked, in her direct “Silvertree method,” as Marna called it, of the ignorance of mothers, the waste of children, the vast economic blunder which for one reason and another even the most progressive of States had been so slow to perceive.  She said that if the commercial and agricultural interests of the country were fostered and protected, why should not the most valuable product of all interests, human creatures, be given at least an equal amount of consideration.  In her own way, which by a happy instinct never included what was hackneyed, she drew a picture of the potentialities of the child considered merely from an economic point of view, and in impulsive words she made plain the need for a bureau, which she suggested should be virtually a part of the governmental structure, in which should be vested authority for the care of children,—­the Bureau of Children, she denominated it,—­a scientific extension of motherhood!

It seemed a part of the whole stirring experience that she should be asked with several others to lunch at the White House with the President and his wife.  The President, it appeared, was profoundly interested.  A quiet man, with a judicial mind, he perceived the essential truth of Kate’s propaganda.  He had, indeed, thought of something similar himself, though he had not formulated it.  He went so far as to express a desire that this useful institution might attain realization while he was yet in the presidential chair.

“I would like to ask you unofficially, Miss Barrington,” he said at parting, “if you are one to whom responsibility is agreeable?”

“Oh,” cried Kate, taken aback, “how do I know?  I am so young, Mr. President, and so inexperienced!”

“We must all be that at some time or other,” smiled the President.  “But it is in youth that the ideas come; and enthusiasm has a value which is often as great as experience.”

“Ideas are accidents, Mr. President,” answered Kate.  “It doesn’t follow that one can carry out a plan because she has seen a vision.”

“No,” admitted the President, shaking hands with her.  “But you don’t look to me like a woman who would let a vision go to waste.  You will follow it up with all the power that is in you.”

* * * * *

It happened that Kate’s propaganda appealed to the popular imagination.  The papers took it up; they made much of the President’s interest in it; they wrote articles concerning the country girl who had come up to town, and who, with a simple faith and courage, had worked among the unfortunate and the delinquent, and whose native eloquence had made her a favorite with critical audiences.  They printed her picture and idealized her in the interests of news.