“I’m tired trying to please you,” he said.  “I have been a fool.  You don’t care that for me.  It was all right when I was younger, when there was no one else to take you riding, and jump off the barn for your amusement, Miss.  Now you have Tom Catherwood and Jack Brinsmade and the Russell boys running after you, it’s different.  I reckon I’ll go to Kansas.  There are Yankees to shoot in Kansas.”

He did not see her smile as he sat staring at his feet.

“Max,” said she, all at once, “why don’t you settle down to something?  Why don’t you work?”

Young Mr. Colfax’s arm swept around in a circle.

There are twelve hundred acres to look after here, and a few niggers.  That’s enough for a gentleman.”

“Pooh!” exclaimed his cousin, “this isn’t a cotton plantation.  Aunt Lillian doesn’t farm for money.  If she did, you would have to check your extravagances mighty quick, sir.”

“I look after Pompey’s reports, I do as much work as my ancestors,” answered Clarence, hotly.

“Ah, that is the trouble,” said Virginia.

“What do you mean?” her cousin demanded.

“We have been gentlemen too long,” said Virginia.

The boy straightened up and rose.  The pride and wilfulness of generations was indeed in his handsome face.  And something else went with it.  Around the mouth a grave tinge of indulgence.

“What has your life been?” she went on, speaking rapidly.  “A mixture of gamecocks and ponies and race horses and billiards, and idleness at the Virginia Springs, and fighting with other boys.  What do you know?  You wouldn’t go to college.  You wouldn’t study law.  You can’t write a decent letter.  You don’t know anything about the history of your country.  What can you do—?”

“I can ride and fight,” he said.  “I can go to New Orleans to-morrow to join Walker’s Nicaragua expedition.  We’ve got to beat the Yankees, —­they’ll have Kansas away from us before we know it.”

Virginia’s eye flashed appreciation.

“Do you remember, Jinny,” he cried, “one day long ago when those Dutch ruffians were teasing you and Anne on the road, and Bert Russell and Jack and I came along?  We whipped ’em, Jinny.  And my eye was closed.  And you were bathing it here, and one of my buttons was gone.  And you counted the rest.”

“Rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief, doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief,” she recited, laughing.  She crossed over and sat beside him, and her tone changed.  “Max, can’t you understand?  It isn’t that.  Max, if you would only work at something.  That is why the Yankees beat us.  If you would learn to weld iron, or to build bridges, or railroads.  Or if you would learn business, and go to work in Pa’s store.”

“You do not care for me as I am?”

“I knew that you did not understand,” she answered passionately.  “It is because I care for you that I wish to make you great.  You care too much for a good time, for horses, Max.  You love the South, but you think too little how she is to be saved.  If war is to come, we shall want men like that Captain Robert Lee who was here.  A man who can turn the forces of the earth to his own purposes.”