And it interested her the way people said:  “Prescott?  Oh yes—­he was in Cuba, wasn’t he?” and then smiled a little, perhaps shrugged a trifle, and added: 

“Great fellow—­Prescott.  Never made a mess of things, anyhow.”

To have vague association with the mysterious things of life, and yet not to have “made a mess of things”—­what more could one ask?

Of course, pounding irritably with her club, the only reason for not marrying him was that there were too many reasons for doing so.  She could not think of a single person who would furnish the stimulus of an objection.  Stupid to have every one so pleased!  But there must always be something wrong, so let that be appeased in having everything just right.  And then there was Cuba for one’s adventurous sense.

She looked about her with satisfaction.  It frequently happened that the place where one was inspired keen sense of the attractions of some other place.  But this time there was no place she would rather be than just where she found herself.  For she was a little tired, after a long round of visits at gay places, and this quiet, beautiful island out in the Mississippi—­large, apart, serene—­seemed a great lap into which to sink.  She liked the quarters:  big old-fashioned houses in front of which the long stretch of green sloped down to the river.  There was something peculiarly restful in the spaciousness and stability, a place which the disagreeable or distressing things of life could not invade.  Most of the women were away, which was the real godsend, for the dreariness and desolation of pleasure would be eliminated.  A quiet post was charming until it tried to be gay—­so mused Miss Katherine Wayneworth Jones.

And of various other things, mused she.  Her brother, Captain Wayneworth Jones, was divorced from his wife and wedded to something he was hoping would in turn be wedded to a rifle; all the scientific cells of the family having been used for Wayne’s brain, it was hard for Katie to get the nature of the attachment, but she trusted the ordnance department would in time solemnly legalize the affair—­Wayne giving in marriage—­destruction profiting happily by the union.  Meanwhile Wayne was so consecrated to the work of making warfare more deadly that he scarcely knew his sister had arrived.  But on the morrow, or at least the day after, would come young Wayneworth, called Worth, save when his Aunt Kate called him Wayne the Worthy.  Wayne the Worthy was also engaged in perfecting a death-dealing instrument, the same being the interrogation point.  Doubtless he would open fire on Aunt Kate with—­Why didn’t his mother and father live in the same place any more, and—­Why did he have to live half the time with mama if he’d rather stay all the time with father?  Poor Worth, he had only spent six years in a world of law and order, and had yet to learn about courts and incompatibilities and annoying things like that.  It did not seem fair that the hardest part of the whole thing should fall to poor little Wayne the Worthy.  He couldn’t help it, certainly.