er can't un-der-stand. Wasn't that right?"

"Certainly! They _can't_ understand it! They seem to think the South we
love is a certain region and everything and everybody within its
borders."

"I have a mighty dim idea where its Northern border is sit-u-a-ted."

"Why, so we all have! Our South isn't a matter of boundaries, or skies,
or landscapes. Don't you and I find it all here now, simply because
we've both got the true feeling--the one heart-beat for it?"

Barbara's only answer was a stronger heart-beat.

"It's not," resumed March, "a South of climate, like a Yankee's Florida.
It's a certain ungeographical South-within-the-South--as portable and
intangible as--as----"

"As our souls in our bodies," interposed Barbara.

"You've said it exactly! It's a sort o' something--social, civil,
political, economic----"

"Romantic?"

"Yes, romantic! Something that makes----"

"'No land like Dixie in all the wide world over!'"

"Good!" cried John. "Good! O, my mother's expressed that beautifully in
a lyric of hers where she says though every endearing charm should fade
away like a fairy gift our love would still entwine itself around the
dear ruin--verdantly--I oughtn't to try to quote it. Doesn't her style
remind you of some of the British poets? Aha! I knew you'd say so! Your
father's noticed it. He says she ought to study Moore!"

Barbara looked startled, colored, and then was impassive again, all in
an instant and so prettily, that John gave her his heartiest admiration
even while chafed with new doubts of Garnet's genuineness.

The commercial man went back to the smoking-room to mention casually
that Mrs. March was a poetess.

"There's mighty little," John began, but the din of a passing freight
train compelled him to repeat much louder--"There's mighty little poetry
that can beat Tom Moore's!"

Barbara showed herself so mystified and embarrassed that March was sure
she had not heard him correctly. He reiterated his words, and she
understood and smiled broadly, but merely explained, apologetically,
that she had thought he had said there was mighty little pastry could
beat his mother's.

John laughed so heartily that Mrs. Fair looked back at Barbara with gay
approval, and life seemed to him for the moment to have less
battle-smoke and more sunshine; but by and by when he thought Barbara's
attention was entirely on the landscape, she saw him unconsciously shake
his head and heave a sigh.

LVI.

CO