him what Beaton had said.

"Do. But he's used to defamation from me, and he'll think you're joking."

"Ah suppose," said Miss Woodburn, "that he's quahte the tahpe of a New
York business man." She added, as if it followed logically, "He's so
different from what I thought a New York business man would be."

"It's your Virginia tradition to despise business," said Beaton, rudely.

Miss Woodburn laughed again. "Despahse it? Mah goodness! we want to get
into it and woak it fo' all it's wo'th,' as Mr. Fulkerson says. That
tradition is all past. You don't know what the Soath is now. Ah suppose
mah fathaw despahses business, but he's a tradition himself, as Ah tell
him." Beaton would have enjoyed joining the young lady in anything she
might be going to say in derogation of her father, but he restrained
himself, and she went on more and more as if she wished to account for
her father's habitual hauteur with Beaton, if not to excuse it. "Ah tell
him he don't understand the rising generation. He was brought up in the
old school, and he thinks we're all just lahke he was when he was young,
with all those ahdeals of chivalry and family; but, mah goodness! it's
money that cyoants no'adays in the Soath, just lahke it does everywhere
else. Ah suppose, if we could have slavery back in the fawm mah fathaw
thinks it could have been brought up to, when the commercial spirit
wouldn't let it alone, it would be the best thing; but we can't have it
back, and Ah tell him we had better have the commercial spirit as the
next best thing."

Miss Woodburn went on, with sufficient loyalty and piety, to expose the
difference of her own and her father's ideals, but with what Beaton
thought less reference to his own unsympathetic attention than to a
knowledge finally of the personnel and materiel of 'Every Other Week.'
and Mr. Fulkerson's relation to the enterprise. "You most excuse my
asking so many questions, Mr. Beaton. You know it's all mah doing that we
awe heah in New York. Ah just told mah fathaw that if he was evah goin'
to do anything with his wrahtings, he had got to come No'th, and Ah made
him come. Ah believe he'd have stayed in the Soath all his lahfe. And now
Mr. Fulkerson wants him to let his editor see some of his wrahtings, and
Ah wanted to know something aboat the magazine. We awe a great deal
excited aboat it in this hoase, you know, Mr. Beaton," she concluded,
with a look that now transferred the interest from Fulkerson to Alma.