It was not a case of pearls before swine, but seemingly rather of pearls before canary-birds or butterflies, which would not defile them, but flutter over them unheedingly.

However, it may be better to cast away one’s pearls of love before anything, rather than keep them.  Anderson, walking along home to his dinner in the summer noon, loving foolishly and unreasonably this young girl who would never, probably, place the slightest value on his love, was not actively unhappy.  After he had turned the corner of the street on which his house stood he heard the whistle of the noon-train, and soon the carriages from the station came whirling in sight.

Samson Rawdy came first, driving a victoria in which sat the gentleman who had been pointed out to him as Ina Carroll’s fiance.  He glanced at him approvingly, and the thought even was in his mind that had this stranger been going to marry Charlotte, instead of her sister, he could have had nothing to say against his appearance.  Suddenly, Major Arms in the victoria looked full at him and bowed, raising his hat in his soldierly fashion.  Anderson was surprised, but returned the salutation promptly.

“Who was that gentleman bowing to you?” his mother asked, as he went up the front steps.  She was standing on the porch in her muslin morning panoply.

“He is the gentleman who is to marry the eldest daughter of Captain Carroll,” replied Anderson.

“Do you know him?”

“No.”

“He bowed.”

“I suppose he thought he recognized me.”

“He looks old enough to be her grandfather, but he looks like a fine man.  I hope she will make him a good wife.  It is a risk for a man of his age, marrying a little young thing.  I wonder why Samson Rawdy was bringing him from the station.  Strange the Carroll carriage didn’t meet him, wasn’t it?”

“Perhaps they were not expecting him,” replied Randolph, which was true.

The carriage occupied by Major Arms and Samson Rawdy overtook Ina and Charlotte before they had walked far, in front of Drake’s drug-store.  They had stopped in there for soda, in fact, and were just coming out.

“Why, there’s Major Arms!” cried Charlotte, so loudly that some lounging men in the drug-store heard her.  Drake, Amidon, and the postmaster, who had just stopped, stood in the doorway, with no attempt to disguise their interest, and watched Major Arms spring out of the carriage like a boy, kiss his sweetheart, utterly unmindful of their observance, then assist the sisters to the back seat, and spring to the front himself.

“Pretty spry for an old boy,” remarked the postmaster as the carriage rolled away.

“Oh, he’s Southern,” returned Amidon, easily.  “That is why.  Catch a Yankee his age with joints as limber.  The cold winters here stiffen folk up quick after they get middle-aged.”

“You don’t seem very stiff in the joints,” said Drake, jocularly.  “Guess you are near as old as that man.”