“You took an awful risk then, Major,” said Phoebe with a twinkle in her eyes.

“I know it,” answered the major.  “I’ve been taking them for nearly forty years.  It’s added much to this affair between Mrs. Buchanan and me.  Small excitements are all that are necessary to fan the true connubial flame.  I didn’t tell her about all this because I really hadn’t the time.  Tell her on the way out, for I expect there will be a rattle of musketry as soon as the dimity brigade hears the circumstances.”

Then for a half-hour Phoebe and the major wrote rapidly until she gathered her sheets together and left them under his paper-weight to be delivered to the devil from the office.

She departed quietly, taking Mrs. Matilda and Caroline with her.

And for still another hour the major continued to push his pen rapidly across the paper, then he settled down to the business of reading and annotating his work.

For years Major Buchanan had been the editor of the Gray Picket, which went its way weekly into almost every home in the South.  It was a quaint, bright little folio full of articles of interest to the old Johnnie Rebs scattered south of Mason and Dixon.  As a general thing it radiated good cheer and a most patriotic spirit, but at times something would occur to stir the gray ashes from which would fly a crash of sparks.  Then again the spirit of peace unutterable would reign in its columns.  It was published for the most part to keep up the desire for the yearly Confederate reunions—­those bivouacs of chosen spirits, the like of which could never have been before and can never be after.  The major’s pen was a trenchant one but reconstructed—­in the main.

But the scene at the Country Club in the early afternoon was, according to the major’s prediction, far from peaceful in tone; it was confusion confounded.  Mrs. Peyton Kendrick was there and the card-tables were deserted as the players, matrons and maids, gathered around her and discussed excitedly the result of her “ways and means for the reunion” mission to the city council, the judge’s insult and David Kildare’s reply.  They were every mother’s daughter of them Dames of the Confederacy and their very lovely gowns were none the less their fighting clothes.

“And then,” said Mrs. Payt, her cheeks pink with indignation, and the essence of belligerency in her excited eyes, “for a moment I sat petrified, petrified with cold rage, until David Kildare’s speech began—­there had never been a greater one delivered in the United States of America!  He said—­he said—­oh, I don’t know what he did say, but it was—­”

“I just feel—­” gasped Polly Farrell with a sob, “that I ought to get down on my knees to him.  He’s a hero—­he’s a—­”

“Of course for a second I was surprised.  I had never heard David Kildare speak about a—­a serious matter before, but I could have expected it, for his father was a most brilliant lawyer, and his mother’s father was our senator for twenty years and his uncle our ambassador to the court of—­” and Mrs. Peyton’s voice trailed off in the clamor.