I still rocked.  “Newport would, indeed, enjoy your plan for it.  Do go on!” I entreated him But he had, for the moment, ceased; and I rose to stretch my legs and saunter among the old headstones and the wafted fragrance.

His aunt (or his cousin, or whichever of them it had been) was certainly right as to his inheriting a pleasant and pointed gift of speech; and a responsive audience helps us all.  Such an audience I certainly was for young John Mayrant, yet beneath the animation that our talk had filled his eyes with lay (I seemed to see or feel) that other mood all the time, the mood which had caused the girl behind the counter to say to me that he was “anxious about something.”  The unhappy youth, I was gradually to learn, was much more than that—­he was in a tangle of anxieties.  He talked to me as a sick man turns in bed from pain; the pain goes on, but the pillow for a while is cool.

Here there broke upon us a little interruption, so diverting, so utterly like the whole quaint tininess of Kings Port, that I should tell it to you, even if it did not bear directly upon the matter which was beginning so actively to concern me—­the love difficulties of John Mayrant.

It was the letter-carrier.

We had come, from our secluded seats, round a corner, and so by the vestry door and down the walk beside the church, and as I read to myself the initials upon the stones wherewith the walk was paved, I drew near the half-open gateway upon Worship Street.  The postman was descending the steps of the post-office opposite.  He saw me through the gate and paused.  He knew me, too!  My face, easily marked out amid the resident faces he was familiar with, had at once caught his attention; very likely he, too, had by now learned that I was interested in the battle of Cowpens; but I did not ask him this.  He crossed over and handed me a letter.

“No use,” he said most politely, “takin’ it away down to Mistress Trevise’s when you’re right here, sir.  Northern mail eight hours late to-day,” he added, and bowing, was gone upon his route.

My home letter, from a man, an intimate running mate of mine, soon had my full attention, for on the second page it said:—­

“I have just got back from accompanying her to Baltimore.  One of us went as far as Washington with her on the train.  We gave her a dinner yesterday at the March Hare by way of farewell.  She tried our new toboggan fire-escape on a bet.  Clean from the attic, my boy.  I imagine our native girls will rejoice at her departure.  However, nobody’s engaged to her, at least nobody here.  How many may fancy themselves so elsewhere I can’t say.  Her name is Hortense Rieppe.”

I suppose I must have been silent after finishing this letter.

“No bad news, I trust?” John Mayrant inquired.

I told him no; and presently we had resumed our seats in the quiet charm of the flowers.

I now spoke with an intention.  “What a lot you seem to have seen and suffered of the advanced Newport!”