"Why, I just can't believe that I'm Peggy Lee!" Peggy stood in the aisle of a sleeping car and looked up and down its length. Keineth, from her superior knowledge of sleeping cars, was pointing out to Peggy its arrangements. Both girls were dressed in new coats and hats and carried with them the bag Aunt Josephine had given Keineth and in which they had packed their nightgowns and toilet articles.

For they were starting for Washington!

Two days before Mr. Lee had come home and asked the children what would be the biggest surprise they could imagine! Of course they had guessed all sorts of things and he had teased them for quite a little while over it! Then, very quietly, he had said:

"Do you think you would like to make a little trip to Washington?"

Keineth had not been able to speak. Peggy, jumping from her chair, rushed at her father and threw both arms about his neck.

"All of us?" she cried between hugs.

"No, this time we'll leave mother home with Billy and Alice. Then the next time they'll go."

Peggy's eyes swept over Billy's and Alice's disappointed faces.

"Oh, I wish we could all go!"

"Mother'll make it up to them, my dear. I'll wager right now all sorts of nice plans are floating around in her head. Well, can you be ready?"

"Can we--!" they cried in chorus.

The hours then were full of excited preparations. The new clothes had to be purchased. "Keineth may be invited to meet the President," Mrs. Lee had laughingly explained, as she held two pretty hats, one in each hand, and considered them carefully.

"Oh, wouldn't that be wonderful!" Keineth whispered. She wanted to ask him so many questions about Daddy--she would tell him that she could keep a secret!

Billy gave them a thousand instructions. They must remember everything they saw to tell him! They must climb the big monument and walk up the Capitol steps and hear the echo in the rotunda of the Capitol Building. They must go to Camp Meyer and to Arlington and to Mount Vernon and be sure to see Washington's swords!

"And the White House china," Mrs. Lee added. "It must be as good as a lesson in history to look at that exhibit in the White House! They'd tell the tastes of the different ones who used them! I can picture pretty Dolly Madison ordering all new china because the pattern of the old did not please her!"

Billy broke in: "I'd want to go to the Treasury Building and see all the money and the watchmen that guard the building from little watch-houses! And the big machine where they destroy all the old money! Four men have keys and they go and unlock it and put the money in it and it gets ground and ground by sharp knives until it's just a pulp! And then they sell the pulp! I wish I had one of those keys!" Billy was very excited.

"And I want to see the Indian Exhibit at the National Museum," declared Peggy.

"You will, my dear, and a great many other things of interest." Little wonder that she could scarcely believe that she was Peggy Lee! As the train pulled away Keineth was very quiet. She was recalling how often her Daddy had told her of the interesting places in the National Capital and how often he had said, "Some day we'll go there together!" And now she was really going, but Dadd............