“There!” said she, “and don’t you ever dare to treat me as a young lady.  Why, Pa, he’s blushing like a girl.  I know.  He’s ashamed to kiss me now.  He’s going to be married at last to that Creole girl in New Orleans.”

The Colonel slapped his knee, winked slyly at Lige, while Virginia began to sing: 

       “I built me a house on the mountain so high,
        To gaze at my true love as she do go by.”

“There’s only one I’d ever marry, Jinny,” protested the Captain, soberly, “and I’m a heap too old for her.  But I’ve seen a youngster that might mate with her, Colonel,” he added mischievously.  “If he just wasn’t a Yankee.  Jinny, what’s the story I hear about Judge Whipple’s young man buying Hester?”

Mr. Carvel looked uneasy.  It was Virginia’s turn to blush, and she grew red as a peony.

“He’s a tall, hateful, Black Republican Yankee!” she said.

“Phee-ew!” whistled the Captain.  “Any more epithets?”

“He’s a nasty Abolitionist!”

“There you do him wrong, honey,” the Colonel put in.

“I hear he took Hester to Miss Crane’s,” the Captain continued, filling the room with his hearty laughter.  “That boy has sand enough, Jinny; I’d like to know him.”

“You’ll have that priceless opportunity to-night,” retorted Miss Virginia, as she flung herself out of the room.  “Pa has made me invite him to my party.”

“Here, Jinny!  Hold on!” cried the Captain, running after her.  “I’ve got something for you.”

She stopped on the stairs, hesitating.  Whereupon the Captain hastily ripped open the bundle under his arm and produced a very handsome India shawl.  With a cry of delight Virginia threw it over her shoulders and ran to the long glass between the high windows.

“Who spoils her, Lige?” asked the Colonel, fondly.

“Her father, I reckon,” was the prompt reply.

“Who spoils you, Jinny?”

“Captain Lige,” said she, turning to him.  “If you had only kept the presents you have brought me from New Orleans, you might sell out your steamboat and be a rich man.”

“He is a rich man,” said the Colonel, promptly.  “Did you ever miss bringing her a present, Lige?” he asked.

“When the Cora Anderson burnt,” answered the Captain.

“Why,” cried Virginia, “you brought me a piece of her wheel, with the char on it.  You swam ashore with it.”

“So I did,” said Captain Brent.  “I had forgotten that.  It was when the French dress, with the furbelows, which Madame Pitou had gotten me from Paris for you, was lost.”

“And I think I liked the piece of wheel better,” says Virginia.  “It was brought me by a brave man, the last to leave his boat.”

“And who should be the last to leave, but the captain?  I saw the thing in the water; and I just thought we ought to have a relic.”

“Lige,” said the Colonel, putting up his feet, “do you remember the French toys you used to bring up here from New Orleans?”