We wheeled our man out into this divine freshness of renewed life, stopping the chair under a glossy, stately magnolia.  My mother and Clelie and Laurence and I bustled about to make him comfortable.  Pitache stood stock still, his tail stuck up like a sternly admonishing forefinger, a-bossing everything and everybody.  We spread a light shawl over the man’s knees, for it is not easy to bear a cruel physical infirmity, to see oneself marred and crippled, in the growing spring.  He looked about him, snuffed, and wrinkled his forehead; his eyes had something of the wistful, wondering satisfaction of an animal’s.  He had never sat in a garden before, in all his life!  Think of it!

Whenever we bring one of our Guest Roomers downstairs, Miss Sally Ruth Dexter promptly comes to her side of the fence to look him over.  She came this morning, looked at our man critically, and showed plain disapproval of him in every line of her face.

On principle Miss Sally Ruth disapproves of most men and many women.  She does not believe in wasting too much sympathy upon people either; she says folks get no more than they deserve and generally not half as much.

Miss Sally Ruth Dexter is a rather important person in Appleboro.  She is fifty-six years old, stout, brown-eyed, suffers from a congenital incapacity to refrain from telling the unwelcome truth when people are madly trying to save their faces,—­she calls this being frank,—­is tactless, independent, generous, and the possessor of what she herself complacently refers to as “a Figure.”

For a woman so convinced we’re all full of natural and total depravity, unoriginal sinners, worms of the dust, and the devil’s natural fire-fodder, Miss Sally Ruth manages to retain a simple and unaffected goodness of practical charity toward the unelect, such as makes one marvel.  You may be predestined to be lost, but while you’re here you shall lack no jelly, wine, soup, chicken-with-cream, preserves, gumbo, neither such marvelous raised bread as Miss Sally Ruth knows how to make with a perfection beyond all praise.

She has a tiny house and a tiny income, which satisfies her; she has never married.  She told my mother once, cheerfully, that she guessed she must be one of those born eunuchs of the spirit the Bible mentions—­it was intended for her, and she was glad of it, for it had certainly saved her a sight of worry and trouble.

There is a cherished legend in our town that Major Appleby Cartwright once went over to Savannah on a festive occasion and was there joyously entertained by the honorable the Chatham Artillery.  The Chatham Artillery brews a Punch; insidious, delectable, deceptive, but withal a pernicious strong drink that is raging, a wine that mocketh and maketh mad.  And they gave it to Major Appleby Cartwright in copious draughts.

Coming home upon the heels of this, the major arose, put on his Prince Albert, donned his top hat, picked a huge bunch of zinnias, and at nine o’clock in the morning marched over to Miss Sally Ruth Dexter’s.