Rosa:  “Crops, mamma?”

Vincent:  “A mistress’s eyebrow?”

Dick:  “Some other fellow’s sister?”

Olympia:  “Some other girl’s brother?”

Mrs. Sprague:  “Giddy girls?”

Merry:  “Bad boys?”

“Well, something about all of these,” Mrs. Atterbury resumed, laughing.  “I don’t think young people in these times are as attached to each other as we used to be in our day—­do you, Mrs. Sprague?”

“I don’t know how it is with you in the South; but we no longer have young people in the North.  Our children bring us up now—­we do not bring them up.”

“That accounts for the higher average of intelligence among parents noted in the last census,” Olympia interrupts her mother to say.

“There, do you see?” Mrs. Sprague continues, with a smile, and in a tone that has none of the asperity the words might imply.  “No reverence, no waiting for the elders, as we were taught.”

“It depends a good deal, does it not, whether the elders are lovers?” Vincent asked, innocently.

“Oh, don’t look at me, Mrs. Sprague, for support or sympathy.  Vincent is your handiwork; he was formed in the North.  He is one of your new school of youth; he is Southern only in loyalty to his State.  For a time I had painful apprehensions that that, too, had been educated away.”

“It was his reason that kept him faithful there,” Rosa ventured, and catches Vincent dropping his eyes in confusion from the demure glances of Olympia.

“Oh, no; pride.  A Virginian is like a Roman, he is prouder to be a citizen in the Dominion than a king in another country,” Mrs. Atterbury says, with stately decision.  “No matter where his heart may be,” and she glanced casually at Olympia, “his duty is to his State.”

“Politics, mamma, politics; remember your young days.  Talk of kings, courts, romance, madrigals—­but leave out politics,” Rosa cried, remonstratingly.

“Let’s turn to political economy.  How do you propose disposing of your tobacco and cotton this year?” Jack asked, gravely.

“We are under contract to deliver ten thousand bales at Wilmington to our agent,” Vincent replied.  “As for tobacco, we expect to sell all we can raise to the Yankee generals.  We have already begun negotiations with some of your commanders who are too good Yankees to miss the main chance.”

“You’re not in earnest?” Jack cried, aghast.

“As earnest as a maid with her first love.”

“But who—­who—­is the miscreant that degrades his cause by such traffic?”

“Oh, if you wait until you learn from me, you’ll never be a dangerous accuser.  I learn in letters from friends in the West that all the cotton crop has been contracted for by men either in the Northern army or high in the confidence of the Administration.  You see, Jack, we are not the Arcadian simpletons you think us.  This war is to be paid for out of Northern pockets, any way you look at it.  We’ve got cotton and tobacco, you must have both; you’ve got money, we must have that.  What we don’t sell to you we’ll send to England.”