, and wore them. It comforts her to make
them for the Crag to wear in memoriam. He wears the collars Cousin
Martha makes him with her own fingers after the pattern she made his
father's by, for the same reason, and lets Cousin Jasmine cut his hair
because she always cut her father's, Colonel Horton's, until his death.
That accounts for the ante-bellum curls and the irregular tags in the
back. I almost laughed when Cousin Martha was telling me, but I
remembered how a glow rose in my heart when I saw that he still had
Father's little old Confederate comrade tailor cut his coats on the same
pattern on which he had cut Father's, since the days of reconstruction.
Sometimes it startles me to find that with all my emancipation I am very
like other women.

But I wonder what I would do if Sallie attired him in any of the late
Henry's wearing apparel?

"What do you suppose is the why of such useless things as slugs?" I
speculated to stop that thought off sharp as we crawled down the row
together, he searching one side of each bush and I the other.

"Well, they brought on this nice companionable hunt for them, didn't
they?" he asked, looking over into my eyes with a laugh.

"I wanted to see you early this morning anyway," he hastily resumed.
"Sallie and the Dominie sat talking to you so late last night that I
didn't feel it was fair to come across after they left. But I wanted you
so I could hardly get to sleep, and I was just half awake from a dream
of you, when I came into the garden."

"My evenings don't belong to anybody, if you need them, Jamie, and you
don't have to be told that," I answered crossly when I thought what a
grand time I might have been having talking about real things with the
Crag, instead of wrestling with Polk's romantics or Sallie's and Mr.
Haley's gush.

"Go on and tell me all about it, while I crawl after you like a worm
myself," I snapped still further.

"Well, here goes! In the City Council meeting last night your Uncle
Peter told us about the plans that they have made up at Bolivar for
entertaining the C. & G. Commission, and the gloom of Polk and Lee, Ned
and the rest of them could have easily been cut in blocks and used for
cold storage purposes. They are just all down and out about it and no
fight left. Of course, they all lose by the bond issue, but I can't see
that it is bad enough to knock them all out like this. I got up in
mighty wrath and--and I have got myself into one job. My eloquen