# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 128

The following afternoon I walked with Miss Harding (I never called her Mrs. Lewis, having gained her consent to continue addressing her in the old way) to the home of a friend where she was having tea. From there I went over to my friends', the Mousers. I remember the queer sense of detachment I felt toward old landmarks which since my childhood had grown strangely unfamiliar to me. Here in my own home town, the same feeling of unreality, of walking through the picture-book, possessed me as it had in France, and it was difficult for me to realize that I was alive and not dreaming dreams. In current slang, I wondered "what it was all about."
Yet all the time Miss Harding and I were discussing my problem. I was telling her how deeply in debt I was, and she was telling me how she had invested in real estate until she and Ralph were both frightened lest they should lose heavily. I was a bit sensitive about even discussing money, feeling assured that now that one of the Hardings knew my story, she would set about to right things for Elizabeth Ann.
Miss Harding said she herself would tell Carrie Votaw the facts about their brother's child, but that Mrs. Votaw had not been particularly well and it would be such a shock that she would prefer to wait until later on, perhaps the following month, when she expected to see her sister again. I agreed very readily to this, and told Miss Harding I would leave the matter entirely in her hands, as she asked me to do.
​When Mrs. Votaw came to the Lewis home the next time, Miss Harding suggested to her that she and her friends take me along back as far as Washington with them, and to this Mrs. Votaw heartily agreed, saying that there was ample room in their Hudson car. She said the car belonged to her friend, Mr. Cyrus Simmons, who, with his brother-in-law, would be the only other two occupants on the return trip. Mrs. Votaw remained over night at her father's, Dr. Harding's, on East Center Street, the night before we were to leave Marion, and I, staying at the Lewis home, slept that night in Miss Harding's room. Her husband had left that day for Florida to attend to some business down there.
I remember well how it stormed that night. It occurred to me, as we lay there talking in our beds across from each other, that the frequent flashes of lightning and peals of thunder were possibly symbolic of Miss Harding's mental state. I felt so sorry for her. She seemed to be so full of fear. I had passed all through the stage of fear of exposure, and did not fear anything except my inability to get Elizabeth Ann and to keep her.
The question of the $90,000 came up again and I said to Miss Harding that I could not see the awfulness of her brother's speculation, for most big men played the market, and just because the President had had no cash with which to cover his pledge, likely they had volunteered to go ahead and "play" for him. Miss Harding took the attitude that her brother was above gambling. I was not, however, at all in agreement with her views that he would not have been capable of "taking chances." He and the fellows in Marion with whom he had played cards had always played for stakes. I told her about one night when Mr. Harding had come over to see me in New York. He related how three men had approached him on the train with an invitation to play cards. They had all repaired to the end compartment. He said that he did not seem to "catch on" to them at first, but very soon he found himself deeply in debt—that is, as I remember, to the extent of something over $100, which was a considerable amount for a train card game I suppose—and he ​told me how he had said to them, "Gentlemen, I always pay my just indebtednesses, but in this instance I am going to give you only as much as I can spare." Thereupon he gave them $50 and his personal card, and told them they could look him up in Washington if they desired to collect the balance. He said to me that it had been a plain "hold-up game" and that he never expected to see them in Washington at all. So, even though the $90,000 in question, which Miss Harding felt her brother did not owe, was nine hundred times the amount of the indebtedness he incurred in playing cards, I was quite sure in my own mind that he had very possibly "taken chances" in this instance as well. I decided he might even have done it for Elizabeth Ann and me, knowing how he so frequently talked of "taking out some kind of a policy," or setting aside some money for me in some way.