“Oh, I hope you will wear this nice business suit, unless they come late in the afternoon.  It seems more sensible here on the edge of the desert, and even if you are the first mayor to do it, I know, the world over, there isn’t another as young.”

Bailey grew thoughtful.  “The mayor in Chicago always wore a Prince Albert.  Why, that long coat and silk hat stood for the office.  They were the most important part of him.  But good-by,” he said hastily, as the train whistled again, nearer, “I’ll call for you at seven.”

Ten minutes later, the mayor stood on the station platform shaking hands with Mrs. Weatherbee.  “Say, I am surprised,” he said.  “I often wondered what you thought of the vale.  Lighter told me how you drove those colts through that day, and I was disappointed not to hear from you.  You didn’t let me know you had an investment already, and it never occurred to me, afterwards, that you were our Mrs. Weatherbee.”

Then, introductions being over, he assisted Miss Morganstein into the tonneau with the bridal couple and gave the seat in front to Mrs. Weatherbee.  He drove very slowly up the new thoroughfare, past the Bailey building, where she expressed her astonishment at the inviting window display of the millinery store.  He explained that offices for the Weatherbee Record had been reserved on the second floor, and that in the hall, in the third story, the first inaugural ball was to be given the following night.  It had been postponed a few days until her arrival, and he hoped he might have the privilege of leading the grand march with her.  And, Mrs. Weatherbee having thanked him, with the pleasure dancing in her eyes, Bailey pointed out the new city hospital, a tall, airy structure, brave in fresh paint, which was equipped with a resident physician and three trained nurses, including Miss Purdy, the milliner’s sister, who was on her way from Washington to join the force.

After that they motored through the residence district, and Mrs. Weatherbee expressed greater wonder and delight at the rows of thrifty homes, each with its breadth of green lawn and budding shrubbery, where hardly six months ago had been unreclaimed acres of sage.  And so, at last, they came to the city park, where the road wound smooth and firm between broad stretches of velvety green, broken by beds of blossoming tulips, nodding daffodils, clumps of landscape foliage putting forth new leaves.  Sprinklers, supplied by a limpid canal that followed the drive, played here, there, everywhere, and under all this moisture and the warm rays of the spring sun, the light soil teemed with awakening life.  Then, finally, the car skirted a low, broad mound, in which was set the source of the viaduct, a basin of masonry, brimming with water crystal clear and fed by two streams that gushed from a pedestal of stone on the farther rim.  “How beautiful!” she exclaimed.  “How incredible!  And there is to be a statue to complete it.  A faun, a water nymph, some figure to symbolize the spirit of the place.”