ur love," he said ruefully, as he picked
the sharp points out of his fingers.
"'Faithful are the wounds of a friend,'" returned the girl. "See
Psalms, xxvii: 6."
"Take care of my cotton press, Graciella; I'll come in to-morrow
evening and work on it some more. I'll bring some cotton along to try
it with."
"You'll probably find some excuse--you always do."
"Don't you want me to come?" he asked with a trace of resentment. "I
can stay away, if you don't."
"Oh, you come so often that I--I suppose I'd miss you, if you didn't!
One must have some company, and half a loaf is better than no bread."
He went on down the hill, turning at the corner for a lingering
backward look at his tyrant. Graciella, bending her head over the
wall, followed his movements with a swift tenderness in her sparkling
brown eyes.
"I love him better than anything on earth," she sighed, "but it would
never do to tell him so. He'd get so conceited that I couldn't manage
him any longer, and so lazy that he'd never exert himself. I must get
away from this town before I'm old and gray--I'll be seventeen next
week, and an old maid in next to no time--and Ben must take me away.
But I must be his inspiration; he'd never do it by himself. I'll go
now and talk to that dear old Colonel French about the North; I can
learn a great deal from him. And he doesn't look so old either," she
mused, as she went back up the walk to where the colonel sat on the
piazza talking to the other ladies.
_Six_
The colonel spent a delightful evening in the company of his friends.
The supper was typically Southern, and the cook evidently a good one.
There was smothered chicken, light biscuit, fresh eggs, poundcake and
tea. The tablecloth and napkins were of fine linen. That they were
soft and smooth the colonel noticed, but he did not observe closely
enough to see that they had been carefully darned in many places. The
silver spoons were of fine, old-fashioned patterns, worn very thin--so
thin that even the colonel was struck by their fragility. How
charming, he thought, to prefer the simple dignity of the past to the
vulgar ostentation of a more modern time. He had once dined off a
golden dinner service, at the table of a multi-millionaire, and had
not enjoyed the meal half so much. The dining-room looked out upon the
garden and the perfume of lilac and violet stole in through the open
windows. A soft-footed, shapely, well-trained negro maid, in white
cap
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