“From early youth to the frost of age
Man’s days have been a mixture
Of all that constitutes in life
A dark and gloomy picture.”

And he stalked off, leaving Miss Martha Hopkins in a state of mind.

“Friend Author,” Alicia murmured, as he paused beside her, “I wish you were my own dear little boy for just five merry minutes.  I’d show you,” she declared, divided between Irish mirth and human pity for Miss Martha, “I’d show you what a hair-brush could accomplish!”

“Too late!” regretted The Author, shaking his head.  “But,” he suggested, brightening, “couldn’t you wish to be my own dear little girl, instead?”

“This is so sudden!” murmured Alicia, coyly.

“Deluding devilette!” breathed The Author, “get thee behind me!”

That evening was the first time I had ever heard myself called “pretty.”  I was used to “businesslike” and “efficient” and “trustworthy”—­all excellent terms, in their way, but not such happy things, any one of them, as “pretty.”

“What are you thinking of, Sophy?” asked The Author.  “Something over the hills and far away?  Because you look as Maude Adams used to look when she first played ‘Peter Pan.’”

I hoped it might be true, because—­

I looked up then and met Mr. Nicholas Jelnik’s dark eyes.  They were falcon eyes, but now there was something in them that made me, to my rage and confusion and chagrin, blush like a silly school-girl.  When I again ventured to glance in his direction he was patiently and politely listening to a white-goateed, game-legged U.C.V. refight the Civil War with so fiery a zest that he presently caught another veteran a resounding crack on the funny-bone with the gold-headed stick he was flourishing.  Both gentlemen half rose, the one making wry faces and rubbing his elbow, the other bowing and apologetic.

“Pahdon me, Majah!  My deah suh, pahdon me!  But I was just tellin’ this boy about the day in the Wilderness his grandfathah Hynds took a Yankee bullet out of my leg with a paih of silvah scissahs and bandaged it with the tail of his shirt.

“‘I’ve lost my niggah and my instruments, Sam,’ says the doctah, ’but that’s no reason why the damyankees should have the satisfaction of killin’ a puffeckly good rebel, when there’s not enough to go around now.  Hold your leg still,’ says he, rollin’ up his sleeves, ‘an’ with the help of God and my scissahs and my shirt-tail, I’ll save it for you.’  An’ he did.  I walked home from Appomattox on that same leg, suh,” said the veteran, and brought his stick down on the toes of it with a force that made him utter a muffled bellow.

The other, still nursing an outraged elbow, smiled sweetly.

“Thanks, Sam,” he drawled.

The Author chuckled appreciatively.  “And to think we Americans rush abroad, when the republic of South Carolina is right next-door to us!” he murmured.