This slight breeze cleared the atmosphere for the time being.  My cousin Flagg took pains to avoid all but the most indirect allusions to the war, except when we were alone, and in several small ways endeavored—­ with not too dazzling success—­to be agreeable to Clara.  The transparency of the effort was perhaps the partial cause of its failure.  And then, too, the nature of his little attentions was not always carefully considered on his part.  For example, Mrs. Wesley could hardly be expected to lend herself with any grace at all to the proposal he made one sultry June evening to “knock her up” a mint-julep, “the most refreshing beverage on earth, madam, in hot weather, I can assure you.”  Judge Ashburton Todhunter, of Fauquier County, had taught him to prepare this pungent elixir from a private receipt for which the judge had once refused the sum of fifty dollars, offered to him by Colonel Stanley Bluegrass, of Chattanooga, and this was at a moment, too, when the judge had been losing very heavily at draw poker.

“All quiet along the Potomac,” whispered the colonel, with a momentary pride in the pacific relations he had established between himself and Mrs. Wesley.

As the mint and one or two other necessary ingredients were lacking to our family stores, the idea of julep was dismissed as a vain dream, and its place supplied by iced Congress water, a liquid which my cousin characterized, in a hasty aside to me, as being a drink fit only for imbecile infants of a tender age.

Washington Flagg’s frequent and familiar mention of governors, judges, colonels, and majors clearly indicated that he had moved in aristocratic latitudes in the South, and threw light on his disinclination to consider any of the humbler employments which might have been open to him.  He had so far conceded to the exigency of the case as to inquire if there were a possible chance for him in the Savonarola Fire Insurance Company.  He had learned of my secretaryship.  There was no vacancy in the office, and if there had been, I would have taken no steps to fill it with my cousin.  He knew nothing of the business.  Besides, however deeply I had his interests at heart, I should have hesitated to risk my own situation by becoming sponsor for so unmanageable an element as he appeared to be.

At odd times in my snuggery after dinner Flagg glanced over the “wants” columns of the evening journal, but never found anything he wanted.  He found many amusing advertisements that served him as pegs on which to hang witty comment, but nothing to be taken seriously.  I ventured to suggest that he should advertise.  He received the idea with little warmth.

“No, my dear boy, I can’t join the long procession of scullions, cooks, butlers, valets, and bottle-washers which seem to make up so large a part of your population.  I couldn’t keep step with them.  It is altogether impossible for me to conduct myself in this matter like a menial-of-all-work out of place.  ’Wanted, a situation, by a respectable young person of temperate habits; understands the care of horses; is willing to go into the country and milk the cow with the crumpled horn.’  No; many thanks.”