wasted enough o' this pretty
mornin' talkin' about old times. Spring time's workin' time and I must
be up and doin'."

But I caught her hand and held her fast.

"Just one thing more, Aunt Jane," I pleaded. "Tell me what you meant
by saying that being the man he was Dr. Pendleton couldn't marry?"

Aunt Jane hesitated a moment looking towards a certain flower-bed
where tulips and hyacinths stood half-smothered in a drift of dead
leaves. The morning hours were passing and the garden needed the work
of her hands, but my clasp was firm and the call of the past was still
sounding in her heart.

"I meant jest what I said, honey," she answered, settling herself
again on the old garden seat. "There's such a thing as a man lovin' a
woman too well to marry her, and that's the way it was with the
doctor. You might think, maybe, Dr. Pendleton come of plain folks,
bein' jest a country doctor. But, no; his people was among the best
and the richest in the county, and he'd had all the chances that rich
people can give their children. He'd been to college and he'd
travelled around and seen the world, and no young man could 'a' had a
prettier prospect before him than Arthur Pendleton,--that was the
doctor's name,--when he come home from his studyin' and his travellin'
and started out to practisin' medicine with his father. Young and
handsome and rich, and then there was Miss Dorothy Schuyler, and he
was in love with her and she was in love with him. Father used to say
when a man had all that, there wasn't standin' room for a wish.

"Miss Dorothy was one o' the Virginia Schuylers, and the first time
she come to visit her Kentucky cousins, she met the young doctor, and
they fell in love with each other jest like Hamilton Schuyler and Miss
Amaryllis, and before she went back to her home it was all settled
that they'd be married the next spring. The young doctor, he made a
journey to Virginia to git her father's and mother's consent; for in
that day and time, child, a young man couldn't jest pick up a gyirl
and walk off with her. He had to say 'By your leave' and do a little
courtin' with the old folks before he could claim the gyirl.

"Well, it all looked like plain sailin' for the young doctor. His
father begun givin' up his practice--took off his own shoes, you might
say, and let his son step into 'em--and the weddin' day was comin',
when all at once the banks got to failin' all over the country, and
the Pendletons lost pretty near