“But why in the name of Heaven should I go if I don’t want to?” said Miss Katherine, and she put her feet on the fender and lay back in her big rose-covered chair.  “I don’t like her, or her family, the English she speaks, or the books she reads.  Why, then, should I go to her parties?  I’m not going!”

“Oh yes, you are.”  And Miss Webb put some more coal on the fire and made it blaze.  “Knowledge of life requires a knowledge of humanity In all its subdivisions.  Mrs. Reagan is a new sub.  As a curio, she’s worth the price.  You couldn’t keep me from her show.”

“But she’s such a snob.  When a woman does not know her grandfather’s first name on her mother’s side and talks of people not being in her set, Christian charity does not require you to visit her.  I agree with Mrs. Rodman.  People like that ought to be let alone.”

“But Mrs. Rodman isn’t going to let them alone.  Not for a minute.  The only thing that goes on among them that she doesn’t know is what she can’t find out.  She met me this morning, and asked me if I’d heard how many people had gotten here, and when I said no, she made me come in Miss Patty’s store, and told me all she’d been able to discover.

“‘There are eighteen guests already,’ she said, ’and nearly all have rooms to themselves.  They tell me it’s the fashion now for husbands and wives not to see each other until breakfast, and not then if the wife wants hers in bed.’  And the way she lifted her chin and eyebrows would be dangerous for you to try.

“‘I tell you it’s a reflection on Yorkburg’s mode of life,’ she went on.  ’For two hundred years people have come and gone in this town, and rooms have never been mentioned.  But this is a degenerate age.  Degenerate!  Scandalous wealth shouldn’t be recognized, and I don’t intend to countenance it myself!’

“But she will.”  And Miss Webb took up her muff to go.  “She bought a pair of cream-colored kid gloves from Miss Patty, and she’s going to wear them at that ball.  You couldn’t keep her away.”

And she was there.  The first one, they say.  She had on the dress her Grandmother wore when her great-grandfather was minister to something in Europe; and when she sailed around the rooms with the big, high comb in her hair that was her great-great-grandmother’s, Miss Webb says she was the best side-show on the grounds.

But if you were to take a gimlet and bore a hole in Mrs. Rodman’s head, you couldn’t make her believe anybody would smile at Her.

She was Mrs. General Rodman, born Mason, and the best blood in Virginia was in her veins.  Also in her father’s, as she put on his tombstone.

Outside of Virginia she didn’t think anybody was really anything.  Of course, she knew there were other states where things were done that made money, but she’d just wave her hand if you mentioned them.

As for a Yankee!  I wouldn’t like to put in words what she does think of a Yankee.