he answered, expressing her pleasure, and asked that they bring her
mother with them.

While it was a matter of no importance to John Calhoun and, therefore,
he made no objection, his wife refused to bring her, saying: "We will
not mention that we intend going to her. She can go after we return. I
am going on a pleasure trip; not to look after an old woman."

When they arrived, Mary was greatly disappointed that her mother had not
come. When told by Rosamond that they had not asked her mother because
she did not look well and the trip might prove too trying, she was
worried about her mother's health and immediately wrote her sister.

In answer, her sister said: "Mother was very much disappointed when she
learned John and Rosamond had gone to visit you, as had she known, she
would have come with them. She is perfectly well and it is quite evident
to me that they did not want her with them. You need not be surprised at
anything that pair do."

John Calhoun did not care to wander about the hills or picnic along the
river bank with his wife, saying: "I had enough of climbing hills and
basket meetings when a boy." His wife accompanied Mary and John on their
rambles, while he loafed around the hotel and the court house, making
friends and acquaintances, or rode over to the mines, cultivating the
miners and discussing politics with them.

He had acquired the knack under his wife's tutelage of beginning an
argument with a man and gradually coming around to his antagonist's way
of thinking; complimenting his opponent upon his way of making a
difficult question clear. He would tell him: "Now I understand it for
the first time. I was wrong, you are right." Thereupon he and his
opponent usually began a sort of Alphonse and Gaston species of
concessions which ended in Saylor convincing the man to his way of
thinking. His wife said it was the Clay way of persuasion.

Several days after Rosamond and her husband arrived, John's mother had a
slight illness which kept Mary at home. Rosamond insisted on continuing
the rambles which had been planned, and her husband refusing to
accompany her, John was forced to do so.

Thus, in a way, the relations of more than a half-dozen years before
were re-established. When they were with Dorothy and Bradford she
insisted on going where they with their little, two-year-old boy could
not go, and in this way managed that she and John were much together.

When they passed some place she remembere