his mouth
and added, "Yes, sir, you are certainly taking a wise and, I may say,
highly necessary step--"

Mrs. Culpepper, small, sprightly, blue-eyed, and calm, entered the
veranda, and cut the colonel off with: "Good evening, boys. So you are
going away. Well--we'll miss you. The girls will be right out."

But the colonel would not be quenched; his fires were burning deeply.
"As I was saying, Mrs. Culpepper," he went on, "the classic training
obtained from a liberal education such as it was my fortune--"

Mrs. Culpepper smiled blandly as she put in, "Now, pa, these boys
don't care for that."

"But, my dear, let me finish. As I started to say: the flowers of
poetry, Keats and his large white plumes, the contemplation of
nature's secrets, the reflective study of--"

"Yes,--here's your coat now, pa," said the wife, returning from a
dive into the hall. "John, how's your ma going to get on without you?
And, pa, be sure don't forget the eggs for breakfast. I declare since
we've moved up here so far from the stores, we nearly starve."

The colonel waited a second while a glare melted into a smile, and
then backed meekly into the arms stretched high to hold his alpaca
coat. As he turned toward the group, he was beaming. "If it were not,"
exclaimed the colonel, addressing the young men with a quizzical
smile, "that there is a lady present--a very important lady in point
of fact,--I might be tempted to say, 'I will certainly be damned!'"
And with that the colonel lifted Mrs. Culpepper off her feet and
kissed her, then lumbered down the steps and strode away. He paused at
the gate to gaze at the valley and turned to look back at the great
unfinished house, then swung into the street and soon his hat
disappeared under the hill.

As he went Mrs. Culpepper said, "Let them say what they will about
Mart Culpepper, I always tell the girls if they get as good a man as
their pa, they will be doing mighty well."

Then the girls appeared bulging in hoops, and ruffles, with elbow
sleeves, with a hint of their shoulders showing and with pink ribbons
in their hair. Clearly it was a state occasion. The mother beamed at
them a moment, and walked around Molly, saying, "I told you that was
all right," and tied Ellen's hair ribbon over, while the young people
were chattering, and before the boys knew it, she had faded into the
dusk of the hall, and the clattering of dishes came to them from the
rear of the house. John fancied he felt th