ey look it--pasty faces."

"Why!" said he, "what grudge have you got against the Rhetts now,
Aunt--it's as bad to take a girl's complexion away as a man's
character--what have the Rhetts been doing to you?"

Miss Pinckney did not seem to hear the question for a moment, then she
said, speaking as if to some invisible person:

"That Frances Rhett may be reckoned the belle of Charleston, that's what I
heard old Mr. Outhwaite call her, but she's a belle I wouldn't care to
have tied round my neck. Belle! She's no more a belle than I am, there are
hundreds of prettier girls between here and the Battery, but she's one of
those sort that have the knack of setting young men against each other and
making them fight for her; she's labelled herself as a prize, which she
isn't. I declare to goodness the world frightens me at times, the way I
see fools going about labelled as clever men, and women your grandfathers
wouldn't have cast an eye at going about labelled as beauties. I do
believe if I was to give myself out as a beauty to-morrow I'd have half
the young idiots in Charleston after me, believing me."

"They're after you already," said Pinckney, "only yesterday I heard young
Reggy Calhoun saying--"

"I know," said Miss Pinckney, "and I want no more of your impudence. Now
take yourself off if you've finished your breakfast, for Phyl and I have
work to do."

He got up and went off laughing by way of the piazza and they could hear
his cheery voice in the garden talking to the old negro gardener.

Miss Pinckney's eyes softened. She was fiddling with a spoon and when she
spoke she seemed speaking to it, turning it about as if to examine its
pattern all the time.

"I don't know what mothers with boys feel like, but I do want to see that
boy safe and married before I go. He's just the sort to be landed in
unhappiness; he is, most surely; well, I don't know, there's no use in
warning young folk, you may spank 'em for stealing the jam but you can't
spank 'em from fooling with the wrong sort of girl."

Miss Pinckney had talked the night before of Phyl's father and had
proposed taking her this morning to the Magnolia cemetery to see the
grave. She broke off the conversation suddenly as this fact strayed into
her mind, and, rising up, invited Phyl to follow her to the kitchen
premises where she had orders to give before starting.

"I always look after my own house," said she, "and always will. Fine
ladies nowadays sit in their d