like the monkey when you put a red flannel cap on him--only the monkey
doesn't push ladies off the sidewalk. And that state of mind, you know,"

said Miss La Heu, softening down from wrath to her roguish laugh, "isn't
the right state of mind for racial progress! But I wasn't thinking of

this. You know he has appointed one of them to office here."
A light entered my brain: John Mayrant had a position at the Custom

House! John Mayrant was subordinate to the President's appointee! She
hadn't changed the subject so violently, after all.

I came squarely at it. "And so you wish him to resign his position?"
But I was ahead of her this time.

"The Chief of Customs?" she wonderingly murmured.
I brought her up with me now. "Did Miss Josephine St. Michael say it was

over his left eye?"
The girl instantly looked everything she thought. "I believe you were

present!" This was her highly comprehensiveexclamation, accompanied also
by a blush as splendidly young as John Mayrant had been while he so

stammeringly brought out his wishes concerning the cake. I at once
decided to deceive her utterly, and therefore I spoke the exact truth:

"No, I wasn't present."
They did their work, my true words; the false impression flowed out of

them as smoothly as California claret from a French bottle.
"I wonder who told you?" my victim remarked. "But it doesn't really

matter. Everybody is bound to know it. You surely were the last person
with him in the churchyard?"

"Gracious!" I admitted again with splendidly mendacious veracity. "How we
do find each other out in Kings Port!"

It was not by any means the least of the delights which I took in the
company of this charming girl that sometimes she was too much for me, and

sometimes I was too much for her. It was, of course, just the accident of
our ages; in a very few years she would catch up, would pass, would

always be too much for me. Well, to-day it was happily my turn; I wasn't
going to finish lunch without knowing all she, at any rate, could tell me

about the left eye and the man in bed.
"Forty years ago," I now, with ingenuity, remarked, "I suppose it would

have been pistols."
"She assented. "And I like that better--don't you--for gentlemen?"

"Well, you mean that fists are--"
"Yes," she finished for me.

"All the same," I maintained, "don't you think that there ought to be
some correspondence, some proportion, between the gravity of the cause

and the gravity of--"
"Let the coal-heavers take to their fists!" she scornfully cried. "People

of our class can't descend--"
"Well, but," I interrupted, "then you give the coal-heavers the palm for

discrimination."
"How's that?"

"Why, perfectly! Your coal-heaver kills for some offenses, while for
lighter ones he--gets a bruise over the left eye."

"You don't meet it, you don't meet it! What is an insult ever but an
insult?"

"Oh, we in the North notice certain degrees--insolence, impudence,
impertinence, liberties, rudeness--all different."

She took up my phrase with a sudden odd quietness. "You in the North."
"Why, yes. We have, alas! to expect and allow for rudeness sometimes,

even in our chosen few, and for liberties in their chosen few; it's only
the hotel clerk and the head waiter from whom we usually get impudence;

while insolence is the chronic condition of the Wall Street rich."
"You in the North!" she repeated. "And so your Northern eyes can't see

it, after all!" At these words my intelligence sailed into a great blank,
while she continued: "Frankly--and forgive me for saying it--I was hoping

that you were one Northerner who would see it."
"But see what?" I barked in my despair.

She did not help me. "If I had been a man, nothing could have insulted me
more than that. And that's what you don't see," she regretfully finished.

"It seems so strange."
I sat in the midst of my great blank, while her handsome eyes rested upon

me. In them was that look of a certain inquiry and a certain remoteness
with which one pauses, in a museum, before some specimen of the

cave-dwelling man.
"You comprehend so much," she meditated slowly, aloud; "you've been such

an agreeabledisappointment, because your point of view is so often the
same as ours." She was still surveying me with the specimen expression,

when it suddenly left her. "Do you mean to sit there and tell me," she
broke out, "that you wouldn't have resented it yourself?"

"O dear!" my mind lamentably said to itself, inside. Of what may have
been the exterior that I presented to her, sitting over my slice of Lady

Baltimore, I can form no impression.
"Put yourself in his place," the girl continued.

"Ah," I gasped, "that is always so easy to say and so hard to do."
My remark proved not a happy one. She made a brief, cold pause over it,

and then, as she wheeled round from me, back to the counter: "No
Southerner would let pass such an affront."

It was final. She regained her usual place, she resumed her ledger; the
curly dog, who had come out to hear our conversation, went in again; I

was disgraced. Not only with the profile of her short, belligerent nose,
but with the chilly way in which she made her pencil move over the

ledger, she told me plainly that my self-respect had failed to meet her
tests. This was what my remarkableingenuity had achieved for me. I

swallowed the last crumbs of Lady Baltimore, and went forward to settle
the account.

"I suppose I'm scarcely entitled to ask for a fresh one to-morrow," I
ventured. I am so fond of this cake."

Her officialness met me adequately. "Certainly the public is entitled to
whatever we print upon our bill-of-fare."

Now this was going to be too bad! Henceforth I was to rank merely as "the
public," no matter how much Lady Baltimore I should lunch upon! A happy

thought seized me, and I spoke out instantly on the strength of it.
"Miss La Heu, I've a confession to make."

But upon this beginning of mine the inauspicious door opened and young
John Mayrant came in. It was all right about his left eye; anybody could

see that bruise!
"Oh!" he exclaimed, hearty, but somewhat disconcerted. "To think of

finding you here! You're going? But I'll see you later?"
"I hope so," I said. "You know where I work."

"Yes--yes. I'll come. We've all sorts of things more to say, haven't we?
We--good-by!"

Did I hear, as I gained the street, something being said about the
General, and the state of his health?

VIII: Midsummer-Night's Dream
You may imagine in what state of wondering I went out of that place, and

how little I could now do away with my curiosity. By the droll looks and
head-turnings which followed me from strangers that passed me by in the

street, I was made aware that I must be talking aloud to myself, and the
words which I had evidently uttered were these: "But who in the world can

he have smashed up?"
Of course, beneath the public stare and smile I kept the rest of my

thoughts to myself; yet they so possessed and took me from my
surroundings, that presently, while crossing Royal Street, I was nearly

run down by an electric car. Nor did even this serve to disperse my
preoccupation; my walk back to Court and Chancel streets is as if it had

not been; I can remember nothing about it, and the first account that I
took of external objects was to find myself sitting in my accustomed

chair in the Library, with the accustomed row of books about the battle
of Cowpens waiting on the table in front of me. How long we had thus been

facing each other, the books and I, I've not a notion. And with such
mysterious machinery are we human beings filled--machinery that is in

motion all the while, whether we are aware of it or not--that now, with
some part of my mind, and with my pencil assisting, I composed several

stanzas to my kinglyancestor, the goal of my fruitless search; and yet
during the whole process of my metrical exercise I was really thinking

and wondering about John Mayrant, his battles and his loves.
ODE ON INTIMATIONS OF ROYALTY

I sing to thee, thou Great Unknown,
Who canst connect me with a throne

Through uncle, cousin, aunt, or sister,