# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 29

I arrived in Chicago the following day.
Up to this time I had never told Mr. Harding that I had ever confided at all in Elizabeth, my sister. I knew it would worry him needlessly. The first afternoon Elizabeth and I were alone together we had a talk. Elizabeth must have felt that the letters I had received from Mr. Harding during my visit to her in June of 1917, and our trip together in Indiana when I met Mr. Harding in Indianapolis, would eventuate in a liaison, for she warned me before I had volunteered any information that I ought to be "very, very careful." She herself had in the meantime married and was living in an apartment she and her husband had taken.
Perhaps my face betrayed me. I felt so free with Elizabeth and did not attempt to hide my emotions. In any event, when she said that I ought to be "very, very careful" I began to cry. I told her with an attempt at a smile that it seemed to be too late to be careful. She was distressed beyond measure, but I hastily assured her, as Mr. Harding had assured me, that it was "all right" and I could "handle" it while in Chicago. Though I had been amply funded for this emergency I had actually thought not at all about an operation. It frightened me so to contemplate such a thing. The thought of having a child held no terror for me; it was the natural thing, and I did not fear it.
Nevertheless I pretended to engage myself in the serious consideration of such an operation. My sister Elizabeth seemed far more anxious than I. She helped me to find a doctor who took care of such cases, and went with me to see him. I remember how he told me, after an examination, that I was of such a nervous temperament that he would be fearful of performing an operation upon me. "If it were your sister there," he said, indicating that if I were as imperturbable as my sister's plump ​figure made her appear to be, "it would not be taking such a risk." But I knew that Elizabeth's forced smile belied her real feelings.
Moreover, the doctor reminded me that I had allowed thirteen weeks to elapse. . . . "If you are, as you say, so situated that you can have the baby, I say by all means go ahead and have it," was his parting advice. He said also that the process of having the child would not be nearly so painful as a premature operation would be and not detrimental to my health.
Elizabeth, however, was far from being at ease, and she then sought the advice of a dear friend of ours, telling her that it was she who needed advice. This friend helped her to prepare some "bitter apple" medicine for me which had to be compounded with painstaking effort, but after it was all ready and bottled I just could not bring myself to take it. The real reason was of course that I could not bring myself to destroy the precious treasure within me.
My letters from Mr. Harding further inclined me to believe that he himself was really indifferent to an operation. He wrote his distress at my having told Elizabeth, and said he really felt there was no need for that, that he had provided ample funds and it seemed I might have sought counsel without telling her, and so on. He wrote that if he had to choose between medicine and an operation he personally would prefer "the knife." Just reading that word "knife" seemed almost to stab me every way, and served to strengthen my determination not to consider such a course. I remembered the wistfulness with which Mr. Harding had talked of a child. In short, I made up my mind to "go ahead and have the baby," as the doctor had advised. I wrote that decision to Mr. Harding after I had taken occasion first to shame him for criticising me because I had confided in my sister. I wrote him that one would think from his letter that I had "shouted it from the housetops," and that Elizabeth was an entirely safe person with whom to entrust our secret; and that, after all, one cannot solve such problems all alone.
​He answered immediately that it was all right with him, he was sorry he had complained, he trusted me implicitly, and was "strong for me," and that it was "the greatest experience a woman ever has," and that he was looking forward to seeing me again. I welcomed the experience of childbirth with all my heart.