licity. Forbes couldn't tell, for instance, why he was amused at a
remark he heard one morning in the store. A colored girl sauntered in,
looking about vacantly. "You ain't got no cotton, is you?" "Why, of
course we have cotton." "Well" (the girl only wanted an excuse to say
something), "I only ast, is you?"

Sports of a colonial and old English flavor that have fallen into disuse
elsewhere varied the life at the White. One day the gentlemen rode in
a mule-race, the slowest mule to win, and this feat was followed by an
exhibition of negro agility in climbing the greased pole and catching
the greased pig; another day the cavaliers contended on the green field
surrounded by a brilliant array of beauty and costume, as two Amazon
baseball nines, the one nine arrayed in yellow cambric frocks and
sun-bonnets, and the other in bright red gowns--the whiskers and big
boots and trousers adding nothing whatever to the illusion of the female
battle.

The two tables, King's and the Benson's, united in an expedition to the
Old Sweet, a drive of eighteen miles. Mrs. Farquhar arranged the affair,
and assigned the seats in the carriages. It is a very picturesque drive,
as are all the drives in this region, and if King did not enjoy it, it
was not because Mrs. Farquhar was not even more entertaining than usual.
The truth is that a young man in love is poor company for himself and
for everybody else. Even the object of his passion could not tolerate
him unless she returned it. Irene and Mr. Meigs rode in the carriage
in advance of his, and King thought the scenery about the tamest he had
ever seen, the roads bad, the horses slow. His ill-humor, however, was
concentrated on one spot; that was Mr. Meigs's back; he thought he had
never seen a more disagreeable back, a more conceited back. It ought to
have been a delightful day; in his imagination it was to be an eventful
day. Indeed, why shouldn't the opportunity come at the Old Sweet, at
the end of the drive?--there was something promising in the name. Mrs.
Farquhar was in a mocking mood all the way. She liked to go to the Old
Sweet, she said, because it was so intolerably dull; it was a sensation.
She thought, too, that it might please Miss Benson, there was such a
fitness in the thing--the old sweet to the Old Sweet. "And he is not so
very old either," she added; "just the age young girls like. I should
think Miss Benson in danger--seriously, now--if she were three or four
years younger.