pleased to pass over my recent lapse from respect. She now broached her
favorite topic, which I need scarcely tell you is genealogy, beginning

with her own.
"If your title to royal blood," she said, "were as plain as mine (through

Admiral Bombo, you know), you would not need any careful research."
She told me a great deal of genealogy, which I spare you; it was not one

family tree, it was a forest of them. It gradually appeared that a
grandmother of my mother's grandfather had been a Fanning, and there were

sundry kinds of Fannings, right ones and wrong ones; the point for me
was, what kind had mine been? No family record showed this. If it was

Fanning of the Bon Homme Richard variety, or Fanning of the Alamance,
then I was no king's descendant

"Worthy New England people, I understand," said my Aunt with her nod of
indulgent stateliness, referring to the Bon Homme Richard species, "but

of entirely bourgeois extraction--Paul Jones himself, you know, was a
mere gardener's son--while the Alamance Fanning was one of those infamous

regulators who opposed Governor Tryon. Not through any such cattle could
you be one of us," said my Aunt.

But a dim, distant, hitherto uncharted Henry Tudor Fanning had fought in
some of the early Indian wars, and the last of his known blood was

reported to have fallen while fighting bravely at the battle of Cowpens.
In him my hope lay. Records of Tarleton, records of Marion's men, these

were what I must search, and for these I had best go to Kings Port. If I
returned with Kinship proven, then I might be a Selected Salic Scion, a

chosen vessel, a royal seed, one in the most exalted circle of men and
women upon our coasts. The other qualifications were already mine:

ancestors colonial and bellicose upon land and sea--
"--besides having acquired," my Aunt was so good as to say, "sufficient

personal presentability since your life in Paris, of which I had rather
not know too much, Augustus. It is a pity," she repeated, "that you will

have so much research. With my family it was all so satisfactorily clear
through Kill-devil Bombo--Admiral Bombo's spirited, reckless son."

You will readilyconceive that I did not venture to betray my ignorance
of these Bombos; I worked my eyebrows to express a silent and timeworn

familiarity.
"Go to Kings Port. You need a holiday, at any rate. And I," my Aunt

handsomely finished, "will make the journey a present to you."
This generosity made me at once, and sincerely, repentant for my

flippancy concerning Charles the Second and Elizabeth. And so, partly
from being tempted by this apple of Eve, and partly because recent

overwork had tired me, but chiefly for her sake, and not to thwart at the
outset her kindly-meant ambitions for me, I kissed the hand of my Aunt

Carola and set forth to Kings Port.
"Come back one of us," was her parting benediction.

II: I Vary My Lunch
Thus it was that I came to sojourn in the most appealing, the most

lovely, the most wistful town in America; whose visiblesadness and
distinction seem also to speak audibly, speak in the sound of the quiet

waves that ripple round her Southern front, speak in the church-bells on
Sunday morning, and breathe not only in the soft salt air, but in the

perfume of every gentle, old-fashioned rose that blooms behind the high
garden walls of falling mellow-tinted plaster: Kings Port the

retrospective, Kings Port the belated, who from her pensive porticoes
looks over her two rivers to the marshes and the trees beyond, the

live-oaks, veiled in gray moss, brooding with memories! Were she my city,
how I should love her!

But though my city she cannot be, the enchanting image of her is mine to
keep, to carry with me wheresoever I may go; for who, having seen her,

could forget her? Therefore I thank Aunt Carola for this gift, and for
what must always go with it in my mind, the quiet and strange romance

which I saw happen, and came finally to share in. Why it is that my Aunt
no longer wishes to know either the boy or the girl, or even to hear

their names mentioned, you shall learn at the end, when I have finished
with the wedding; for this happy story of love ends with a wedding, and

begins in the Woman's Exchange, which the ladies of Kings Port have
established, and (I trust) lucratively conduct, in Royal Street.

Royal Street! There's a relevance in this name, a fitness to my errand;
but that is pure accident.

The Woman's Exchange happened to be there, a decorous resort for those
who became hungry, as I did, at the hour of noon each day. In my very

pleasant boarding-house, where, to be sure, there was one dreadful
boarder, a tall lady, whom I soon secretly called Juno--but let

unpleasant things wait--in the very pleasant house where I boarded (I had
left my hotel after one night) our breakfast was at eight, and our dinner

not until three: sacred meal hours in Kings Port, as inviolable, I fancy,
as the Declaration of Independence, but a gap quite beyond the stretch of

my Northern vitals. Therefore, at twelve, it was my habit to leave my
Fanning researches for a while, and lunch at the Exchange upon chocolate

and sandwiches most delicate in savor. As, one day, I was luxuriously
biting one of these, I heard his voice and what he was saying. Both the

voice and the interesting order he was giving caused me, at my small
table, in the dim back of the room, to stop and watch him where he stood

in the light at the counter to the right of the entrance door. Young he
was, very young, twenty-two or three at the most, and as he stood, with

hat in hand, speaking to the pretty girl behind the counter, his head and
side-face were of a romantic and high-strung look. It was a cake that he

desired made, a cake for a wedding; and I directly found myself curious
to know whose wedding. Even a dull wedding interests me more than other

dull events, because it can arouse so much surmise and so much prophecy;
but in this wedding I instantly, because of his strange and winning

embarrassment, became quite absorbed. How came it he was ordering the
cake for it? Blushing like the boy that he was entirely, he spoke in a

most engaging voice: "No, not charged; and as you don't know me, I had
better pay for it now."

Self-possession in his speech he almost had; but the blood in his cheeks
and forehead was beyond his control.

A reply came from behind the counter: "We don't expect payment until
delivery."

"But--a--but on that morning I shall be rather particularly engaged." His
tones sank almost away on these words.

"We should prefer to wait, then. You will leave your address. In
half-pound boxes, I suppose?"

"Boxes? Oh, yes--I hadn't thought--no--just a big, round one. Like this,
you know!" His arms embraced a circular space of air. "With plenty of

icing."
I do not think that there was any smile on the other side of the counter;

there was, at any rate, no hint of one in the voice. "And how many
pounds?"

He was again staggered. "Why--a--I never ordered one before. I want
plenty--and the very best, the very best. Each person would eat a pound,

wouldn't they? Or would two be nearer? I think I had better leave it all
to you. About like this, you know." Once more his arms embraced a

circular space of air.
Before this I had never heard the young lady behind the counter enter

into any conversation with a customer. She would talk at length about all
sorts of Kings Port affairs with the older ladies connected with the

Exchange, who were frequently to be found there; but with a customer,
never. She always took my orders, and my money, and served me, with a

silence and a propriety that have become, with ordinary shopkeepers, a
lost art. They talk to one indeed! But this slim girl was a lady, and

consequently did the right thing, marking and keeping a distance between
herself and the public. To-day, however, she evidently felt it her

official duty to guide the hapless young, man amid his errors. He now
appeared to be committing a grave one.

"Are you quite sure you want that?" the girl was asking.
"Lady Baltimore? Yes, that is what I want."

"Because," she began to explain, then hesitated, and looked at him.
Perhaps it was in his face; perhaps it was that she remembered at this

point the serious difference between the price of Lady Baltimore (by my
small bill-of-fare I was now made acquainted with its price) and the cost

of that rich article which convention has prescribed as the cake for