# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 77

When we returned to Judge Mouser's the judge was sitting on the porch, and his remark to his wife was, "Dell, one of us ought to go over to Dr. Harding's and say how-do-you-do to President and Mrs. Harding." Dr. Harding was the President's father. His home was the social headquarters for the presidential party. After considerable discussion, Mrs. Mouser decided she herself would go and convey the Judge's compliments to the President and his wife.
"But you must come along with me, Nan," she said turning to me.
​I insisted I did not care to go, fearing Mr. Harding might disapprove for some reason, but Mrs. Mouser naturally could not see why I objected to going.
"You adore Mr. Harding so, Nan, and always have, so I can't see why you object to going over—it's just a matter of form, anyway." So it did seem up to me to accompany her and in the end I consented.
Annabel, or else young Mrs. Grant Mouser (I have forgotten which), drove us over but would not go in with us.
We found that Mr. Harding had gone off with the Dr. Carl Sawyers, Sr. and Jr., and Brigadier-General Charles G. Dawes to play golf, but Mrs. Warren Harding was receiving informally in the living-room of Dr. Harding's home. With her we found Mr. and Mrs. "Ed" Uhler, and it seems to me another person whom I cannot recall now was there also.
If I had any personal misgivings as to the spirit of Mrs. Harding's greeting they were entirely without foundation, for, after shaking hands with Mrs. Mouser, she held out her hand to me with a smile. "Why, how-do-you-do, Nan? How are you?" she inquired pleasantly. If I had ever had reason to doubt that Warren Harding's love for another woman was suspected by his legal wife, I was with this meeting disarmed of all further semi-pleasurable apprehension that I was the person Florence Harding would name! As a matter of frank truth, it was never that I particularly cared whether or not she did discover it, but Mr. Harding's statement to me that "she'd raise hell, Nan!" had been my cue for guarding well a situation which Mr. Harding had termed his "greatest joy." In the past year and a half, Tim Slade has stated to me that if Florence Harding had known the love Warren Harding and I bore to each other, the qualities latent in her temperament would not have released him but might very possibly have sought some form of retaliation. What a strange love, I thought, that would hold the happiness of one's husband in a vise! But my solicitude for Mr. Harding's peace of mind insured every cautionary measure on my part.
​There in the familiar atmosphere of Dr. Harding's home, it occurred to me that perhaps now Mrs. Warren Harding might drop her patronizing manner and become natural; certainly the Uhlers, genuine people, inspired such naturalness, for I knew them to be as good friends as the Hardings had in Marion. In my Harding book I have a clipping which says of Warren Harding, "President Harding has one of those rare temperaments which can keep aloof and cool at close range," and I know that even from my own experience of greeting him in public places where it seemed wise for us to maintain a certain dignity, I was ever conscious of his "close range" and felt the sincere warmth of his smile and hand pressure sufficient to assure me that he was not above, but one with, me. Mrs. Harding was looking particularly well on that occasion and I am sure that her general hauteur of manner was felt by her to be in keeping with the position in which she had found herself.
"Yes, indeed," Mrs. Harding continued what had become a monologue, "I keep Warren the best dressed man in Washington."
I could not help remembering how happy Mr. Harding was when he could just lounge around in his old clothes. Moreover, Mr. Harding had said to me, "Brooks is my valet; responsible for my clothes," when we had discussed him in connection with sending my letters to Mr. Harding through Brooks.
"That's right, Florence!" laughed Mr. Uhler, "don't let anyone get ahead of you!"