I assented. “And women—you’ll
agree?—are always simple when they’re
not!”
She finished her sums. “Well, I think he’s
foolish!” she frankly stated. “Didn’t
Aunt Josephine think so, too?”
“Aunt Josephine?”
“Miss Josephine St. Michael—my greet-aunt—the
lady who embroidered. She brought me here from
the plantation.”
“No, she wouldn’t talk about it.
But don’t you think it is your turn now?”
“I’ve taken my turn!”
“Oh, not much. To say you think he’s
foolish isn’t much. You’ve seen him
since?”
“Seen him? Since when?”
“Here. Since the postponement. I take
it he came himself about it.”
“Yes, he came. You don’t suppose
we discussed the reasons, do you?”
“My dear young lady, I suppose nothing, except
that you certainly must have seen how he looked (he
can blush, you know, handsomely), and that you may
have some knowledge or some guess—”
“Some guess why it’s not to be until Wednesday
week? Of course he said why. Her poor, dear
father, the General, isn’t very well.”
“That, indeed, must be an anxiety for Johnny,”
I remarked.
This led her to indulge in some more merriment.
“But he does,” she then said, “seem
anxious about something.”
“Ah,” I exclaimed. “Then you
admit it, too!”
She resorted again to the bland, inquiring stare.
“What he won’t admit,” I explained,
“even to his intimate Aunt, because he’s
so honorable.”
“He certainly is simple,” she commented,
in soft and pensive tones.
“Isn’t there some one,” I asked,
“who could—not too directly, of course—suggest
that to him?”
“I think I prefer men to be simple,” she
returned somewhat quickly.
“Especially when they’re in love,”
I reminded her somewhat slowly.
“Do you want some Lady Baltimore to-day?”
she inquired in the official Exchange tone.
I rose obediently. “You’re quite
right, I should have gone back to the battle of Cowpens
long ago, and I’ll just say this—since
you asked me what I thought of him—that
if he’s descended from that John Mayrant who
fought the Serapes under Paul Jones—”
“He is!” she broke in eagerly.
“Then there’s not a name in South Carolina
that I’d rather have for my own.”
I intended that thrust to strike home, but she turned
it off most competently. “Oh, you mustn’t
accept us because of our ancestors. That’s
how we’ve been accepting ourselves, and only
look where we are in the race!”
“Ah!” I said, as a parting attempt, “don’t
pretend you’re not perfectly satisfied—all
of you—as to where you are in the race!”
“We don’t pretend anything!” she
flashed back.
One is unthankful, I suppose, to call a day so dreary
when one has lunched under the circumstances that
I have attempted to indicate; the bright spot ought
to shine over the whole. But you haven’t
an idea what a nightmare in the daytime Cowpens was
beginning to be.
