“Eliza says she has no fear of that.”

“Were I Eliza, Hugh’s performance would make me very uneasy.”

“Julia, John does not resemble Hugh.”

“Very decidedly, in coloring, Maria.”

“And Hugh found that girl in Minneapolis, Julia, where there was doubtless no pick for the poor fellow.  And remember that George chose a lady, at any rate.”

Mrs. Weguelin gave to this a short assent.  “Yes.”  It portended something more behind, which her next words duly revealed.  “A lady; but do—­any—­ ladies ever seem quite like our own?

“Certainly not, Julia.”

You see, they were forgetting me again; but they had furnished me with a clue.

“Mr. John Mayrant has married brothers?”

“Two,” Mrs. Gregory responded.  “John is the youngest of three children.”

“I hadn’t heard of the brothers before.”

“They seldom come here.  They saw fit to leave their home and their delicate mother.”

“Oh!”

“But John,” said Mrs. Gregory, “met his responsibility like a Mayrant.”

“Whatever temptations he has yielded to,” said Mrs. Weguelin, “his filial piety has stood proof.”

“He refused,” added Mrs. Gregory, “when George (and I have never understood how George could be so forgetful of their mother) wrote twice, offering him a lucrative and rising position in the railroad company at Roanoke.”

“That was hard!” I exclaimed.

She totally misapplied my sympathy.  “Oh, Anna Mayrant,” she corrected herself, “John’s mother, Mrs. Hector Mayrant, had harder things than forgetful sons to bear!  I’ve not laid eyes on those boys since the funeral.”

“Nearly two years,” murmured Mrs. Weguelin.  And then, to me, with something that was almost like a strange severity beneath her gentle tone:  “Therefore we are proud of John, because the better traits in his nature remind us of his forefathers, whom we knew.”

“In Kings Port,” said Mrs. Gregory, “we prize those who ring true to the blood.”

By way of response to this sentiment, I quoted some French to her.  “Bon chien chasse de race.”

It pleased Mrs. Weguelin.  Her guarded attitude toward me relented.  “John mentioned your cultivation to us,” she said.  “In these tumble-down days it is rare to meet with one who still lives, mentally, on the gentlefolks’ plane—­the piano nobile of intelligence!”

I realized how high a compliment she was paying me, and I repaid it with a joke.  “Take care.  Those who don’t live there would call it the piano snobile.”

“Ah!” cried the delighted lady, “they’d never have the wit!”

“Did you ever hear,” I continued, “the Bostonian’s remark—­’The mission of America is to vulgarize the world’?”

“I never expected to agree so totally with a Bostonian!” declared Mrs. Gregory.

“Nothing so hopeful,” I pursued, “has ever been said of us.  For refinement and thoroughness and tradition delay progress, and we are sweeping them out of the road as fast as we can.”