st season, but it didn't work, somehow.

They have never revisited Dixie; and only once in all these years have
they seen a group of Suez faces. But a season or two ago--I think it was
ninety-three--in Fourteenth Street, New York, wife and I came square
upon Captain Charlie Champion, whom I had not seen for years, indeed,
not since his marriage, and whom my wife, never having been in Suez, did
not know. Still he would have us up to dinner at his hotel with Mrs.
Champion. He promised me I should find her "just as good and sweet and
saane as of old, and evm prettieh!" Plainly the hearty Captain was more
a man than ever, and she had made him so! He told us we should meet
Colonel Ravenel and also--by pure good luck!--Mr. and Mrs. Henry Fair.
You may be sure we were glad to go.

Ravenel had to send us word from the rotunda begging us to go in to
dinner without him and let him join us at table. Champion neglected his
soup, telling us of two or three Suez people. "Pettigrew?--O he left
Suez the year Rosemont chaanged haynds. Po' Shot!--he's ow jail-keepeh,
now, you know--he says one day, s'e, 'Old Pettie may be in heavm by now,
but I don't believe he's happy; he'll neveh get oveh the loss of his
sla-aves!'"

Fair spoke of John March, saying his influence in that region was not
only very strong but very fine. Whereto Champion responded,

"--Result is we've got a betteh town and a long sight betteh risin'
generation than we eveh had befo'. I don't reckon Mr. Fair thinks we do
the dahkeys justice. John says we don't and I don't believe we do. When
it comes to that, seh, where on earth does the under man get all his
rights? But we come neareh toe it in the three counties than anywheres
else in Dixie, and that I _know_."

I dropped an interrogative hint as to how March stood with Ravenel.

The Captain smiled. "They neveh cla-ash. Ravenel's the same mystery he
always was, but not the same poweh; his losin' Garnet the way he did,
and then John bein' so totally diffe'nt, you know--John don't ofm ask
Jeff-Jack to do anything, but he neveh aasks in vaain.--John's motheh?
Yes, she still lives with him.--No, she ve'y seldom eveh writes much
poetry any mo', since heh book turned out to be such a' unaccountable
faailu'e. She jest lives with him, and really"--he dropped his
voice--"you'd be amaazed to see how much she's sort o' sweetened and
mellered under the influence of--Ah! there's Colonel Ravenel----"

He broke off with a whisper