“How much, cousin Tom?” asked the upcountry bride.

And the gay old doctor chuckled, as he kissed her:  “Thirty dollars this afternoon, my darling.”

At this the Briton dragged me behind a door in the hall, and there we danced together.

“That Mayrant chap will do,” he declared; and we composed ourselves for a proper entrance into the sitting room, where the introductions had been made, and where Doctor Beaugarcon and Mrs. Braintree’s husband had already fallen into war reminiscences, and were discovering with mutual amiability that they had fought against each other in a number of battles.

“And you generally licked us,” smiled the Union soldier.

“Ah! don’t I know myself how it feels to run!” laughed the Confederate.  “Are you down at the club?”

But upon learning from the poetess that her ode was now to be read aloud, Doctor Beaugarcon paid his fourth cousin’s daughter a brief, though affectionate, visit, lamenting that a very ill patient should compel him to take himself away so immediately, but promising her presently in his stead two visitors much more interesting.

“Miss Josephine St. Michael desires to call upon you,” he said, “and I fancy that her nephew will escort her.”

“In all this rain?” said the bride.

“Oh, it’s letting up, letting up!  Good night, Mistress Trevise.  Good night, sir; I am glad to have met you.”  He shook hands with Mrs. Braintree’s husband.  “We fellows,” he whispered, “who fought in the war have had war enough.”  And bidding the general company good night, and kissing the bride again, he left us even as the poetess returned from her room with the manuscript.

I soon wished that I had escaped with him, because I feared what Mrs. Braintree might say when the verses should be finished; and so, I think, did her husband.  We should have taken the hint which tactful Doctor Beaugarcon had meant, I began to believe, to give us in that whispered remark of his.  But it had been given too lightly, and so we sat and heard the ode out.  I am sure that the poetess, wrapped in the thoughts of her own composition, had lost sight of all but the phrasing of her poem and the strong feelings which it not unmusically voiced; there Is no other way to account for her being willing to read it in Mrs. Braintree’s presence.

Whatever gayety had filled me when the Boston lady had clashed with Juno was now changed to deprecation and concern.  Indeed, I myself felt almost as if I were being physically struck by the words, until mere bewilderment took possession of me; and after bewilderment, a little, a very little, light, which, however, rapidly increased.  We were the victors, we the North, and we had gone upon our way with songs and rejoicing—­able to forget, because we were the victors.  We had our victory; let the vanquished have their memory.  But here was the cry of the vanquished, coming after forty years.  It was the time which at first bewildered me; Juno