In the North, everybody is afraid of something:  afraid of the legislature, afraid of the trusts, afraid of the strikes, afraid of what the papers will say, of what the neighbors will say, of what the cook will say; and most of all, and worst of all, afraid to be different from the general pattern, afraid to take a step or speak a syllable that shall cause them to be thought unlike the monotonous millions of their fellow-citizens; the land of the free living in ceaseless fear!  Well, I was already afraid of Mrs. Gregory St. Michael.  As we walked and she talked, I made one or two attempts at conversation, and speedily found that no such thing was the lady’s intention:  I was there to listen; and truly I could wish nothing more agreeable, in spite of my desire to hear further about next Wednesday’s wedding and the brute of a girl.  But to this subject Mrs. St. Michael did not return.  We crossed Worship Street and Chancel Street, and were nearing the East Place where a cannon was being shown me, a cannon with a history and an inscription concerning the “war for Southern independence, which I presume your prejudice calls the Rebellion,” said my guide.  “There’s Mrs. St. Michael now, coming round the corner.  Well, Julia, could you read the yacht’s name with your naked eye?  And what’s the name of the gambler who owns it?  He’s a gambler, or he couldn’t own a yacht—­unless his wife’s a gambler’s daughter.”

“How well you’re feeling to-day, Maria!” said the other lady, with a gentle smile.

“Certainly.  I have been talking for twenty minutes.”  I was now presented to Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael, also old, also charming, in widow’s dress no less in the bloom of age than Mrs. Gregory, but whiter and very diminutive.  She shyly welcomed me to Kings Port.  “Take him home with you, Julia.  We pulled your bell three times, and it’s too damp for you to be out.  Don’t forget,” Mrs. Gregory said to me, “that you haven’t told me a word about your Aunt Carola, and that I shall expect you to come and do it.”  She went slowly away from us, up the East Place, tall, graceful, sweeping into the distance like a ship.  No haste about her dignified movement, no swinging of elbows, nothing of the present hour!

“What a beautiful girl she must have been!” I murmured aloud, unconsciously.

“No, she was not a beauty in her youth,” said my new guide in her shy voice, “but always fluent, always a wit.  Kings Port has at times thought her tongue too downright.  We think that wit runs in her family, for young John Mayrant has it; and her first-cousin-once-removed put the Earl of Mainridge in his place at her father’s ball in 1840.  Miss Beaufain (as she was then) asked the Earl how he liked America; and he replied, very well, except for the people, who were so vulgar.  ‘What can you expect?’ said Miss Beaufain; ‘we’re descended from the English.’  I am very sorry for Maria—­for Mrs. St. Michael—­just at present.  Her young cousin, John Mayrant, is making an alliance deeply vexatious to her.  Do you happen to know Miss Hortense Rieppe?”