“It wa’n’t his clothes, nuther,” she told her brother, Obed Gott, as they sat at the dinner table.  “I don’t know what ’twas, but you could jest see that he was a gentleman all over.  I wouldn’t wonder if he was one of them New York millionaires, like Mr. Williams—­but so different.  ‘Redny’ Blount says he see his name onto the hotel register and ’twas ‘Cuthbertson Scott Hardee.’  Ain’t that a tony name for you?  And his darky man called him ‘Major.’  I never see sech manners on a livin’ soul!  Obed, I do wish you’d stop eatin’ pie with a knife.”

Under these pleasing circumstances did Major Cuthbertson Scott Hardee make his first appearance in East Harniss, and the reputation spread abroad by Mr. Blount and Mrs. Ginn was confirmed as other prominent citizens met him, and fell under the spell.  In two short weeks he was the most popular and respected man in the village.  The Methodist minister said, at the Thursday evening sociable, that “Major Hardee is a true type of the old-school gentleman,” whereupon Beriah Higgins, who was running for selectman, and therefore felt obliged to be interested in all educational matters, asked whereabouts that school was located, and who was teaching it now.

It was a treat to see the Major stroll down Main Street to the post office every pleasant spring morning.  Coat buttoned tight, silk hat the veriest trifle on one side, one glove on and its mate carried with the cane in the other hand, and the buttonhole bouquet—­always the bouquet—­as fresh and bright and jaunty as its wearer himself.

It seemed that every housekeeper whose dwelling happened to be situated along that portion of the main road had business in the front yard at the time of the Major’s passing.  There were steps to be swept, or rugs to be shaken, or doorknobs to be polished just at that particular time.  Dialogues like the following interrupted the triumphal progress at three minute intervals: 

“Good-morning, Mrs. Sogberry.  Good-morning.  A delightful morning.  Busy as the proverbial bee once more, I see.  I can never cease to admire the industry and model neatness of the Massachusetts housekeeper.  And how is your charming daughter this morning?  Better, I trust?”

“Well, now, Major Hardee, I don’t know.  Abbie ain’t so well’s I wish she was.  She set up a spell yesterday, but the doctor says she ain’t gittin’ along the way she’d ought to.  I says to him, s’I, ’Abbie ain’t never what you’d call a reel hearty eater, but, my land! when she don’t eat nothin’,’ I says—­”

And so on and so on, with the Major always willing to listen, always sympathetic, and always so charmingly courteous.