lunch, and the scientists and ambassadors don’t do that when they can avoid it. He’d accept your invitation, and the next time he went to dine with the Secretary of State he’d make a nice little story of it, and paint you up so pretty you’d hardly know
When I asked her whether I’d better take my pottery—it was there under the table between us—to the Shoreham to show Mr. Wagner, she tittered again. “I wouldn’t bother. If you show him enough of the Shoreham pottery, that will be more effective.”
The next morning, when the secretary arrived at his office, he stopped by my chair and said he understood he had an engagement with me for one o’clock. That was a good idea, he added: his mind was freer when he was away from office routine.
I had been in Washington twenty-two days when I took the secretary out to lunch.
It was an excellent lunch. We had a bottle of Château d’Yquem. I’d never heard of such a wine before, but I remember it because it cost five dollars.
I drank only one glass, and that pleased him too, for he drank the rest.
Though he was friendly and talked a great deal, my heart sank lower, for he wouldn’t let me explain my mission to him at all.
He kept telling me that he knew all about the Southwest. He had been sent by the Smithsonian to conduct parties of European archaeologists through all the show places, Frijoles and Canyon de Chelly, and Taos and the Hopi pueblos.
When some Austrian Archduke had gone to hunt in the Pecos range, he had been sent by his chief and the German ambassador to manage the tour, and he had done it with such success that both he and the Director were given decorations from the Austrian Crown, in recognition of his services.