Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/141

 of Little Arcady's belief, soared aloft to realms of pure sunlight.

My knowledge of subsequent events that day was gained partly by word of mouth and partly by observations which I was permitted to make.

To the hotel Solon conducted his charges, handing them from the bus with a flourish that seemed to confer upon them the freedom of the city. From shop doors and adjacent street corners the most curious among us beheld a tall, full-figured woman of majestic carriage, with a high, noble forehead and a face that seemed to register traces of some thirty-five earnest but not unprofitable years. Even in the quick glance she bestowed up and down Washington Street before the hotel swallowed her up, her quality was to be noted by the discerning,—the quality of a commander, of one born to prevail. The flash of her gray-green eye was interested but unconcerned. Complemented by the marked auburn of her plenteous hair, the eyes were masterful, advertising most legibly the temperament of a capable ruler. The subdued, white-faced boy of twelve, with hair like his mother's, who trotted closely at her heels was, for the moment, a negligible factor.

An hour later I entered the sanctum of the Argus. to find its owner alone before his littered table. Upon his usually careless face was the most profoundly thoughtful look I had ever known him wear. Open before him was that week's Argus, but his eyes narrowed to its neat columns only at intervals.