Colonel Blaylock rose and made a bow--a bow that belonged with silk
stockings and lace ruffles and velvet.

"Practical affairs," he said, with a wave of his hand toward the
promoter, "are, if I may use the comparison, the garden walks upon
which we tread through life, viewing upon either side of us the flowers
which brighten that journey. It is my pleasure to be able to lay out
a walk or two. Mrs. Blaylock, sir, is one of those fortunate higher
spirits whose mission it is to make the flowers grow. Perhaps, Mr.
Bloom, you have perused the lines of Lorella, the Southern poetess.
That is the name above which Mrs. Blaylock has contributed to the press
of the South for many years."

"Unfortunately," said Mr. Bloom, with a sense of the loss clearly
written upon his frank face, "I'm like the Colonel--in the walk-making
business myself--and I haven't had time to even take a sniff at the
flowers. Poetry is a line I never dealt in. It must be nice,
though--quite nice."

"It is the region," smiled Mrs. Blaylock, "in which my soul dwells. My
shawl, Peyton, if you please--the breeze comes a little chilly from yon
verdured hills."

The Colonel drew from the tail pocket of his coat a small shawl of
knitted silk and laid it solicitously about the shoulders of the lady.
Mrs. Blaylock sighed contentedly, and turned her expressive eyes--still
as clear and unworldly as a child's--upon the steep slopes that were
slowly slipping past. Very fair and stately they looked in the clear
morning air. They seemed to speak in familiar terms to the responsive
spirit of Lorella. "My native hills!" she murmured, dreamily. "See
how the foliage drinks the sunlight from the hollows and dells."

"Mrs. Blaylock's maiden days," said the Colonel, interpreting her mood
to J. Pinkney Bloom, "were spent among the mountains of northern
Georgia. Mountain air and mountain scenery recall to her those days.
Holly Springs, where we have lived for twenty years, is low and flat. I
fear that she may have suffered in health and spirits by so long a
residence there. That is one portent reason for the change we are
making. My dear, can you not recall those lines you wrote--entitled, I
think, 'The Georgia Hills'--the poem that was so extensively copied by
the Southern press and praised so highly by the Atlanta critics?"

Mrs. Blaylock turned a glance of speaking tenderness upon the Colonel,
fingered for a moment the silvery curl that drooped upon her bosom,