declined altogether, assuring me that it was close, and that he could

walk there as well as if nothing had happened to him; but upon my asking
him if I was on the right way to the carpenter's shop, he looked at me

curiously.
"No use you gwine dab, sah. Dat shop close up. He not wukkin, dis week,

and dat why fo' I jaw him jus' now when you come in an' stop him. He de
cahpentah, my gran'son, Cha's Coteswuth."

XII: From the Bedside
Next morning when I saw the weltering sky I resigned myself to a day of

dullness; yet before its end I had caught a bright new glimpse of John
Mayrant's abilities, and also had come, through tribulation, to a further

understanding of the South; so that I do not, to-day, regret the
tribulation. As the rain disappointed me of two outdoor expeditions, to

which I had been for some little while looking forward, I dedicated most
of my long morning to a sadly neglected correspondence, and trusted that

the expeditions, as soon as the next fine weather visited Kings Port,
would still be in store for me. Not only everybody in town here, but Aunt

Carola, up in the North also, had assured me that to miss the sight of
Live Oaks when the azaleas in the gardens of that country seat were in

flower would be to lose one of the rarest and most beautiful things which
could be seen anywhere; and so I looked out of my window at the furious

storm, hoping that it might not strip the bushes at Live Oaks of their
bloom, which recent tourists at Mrs. Trevise's had described as drawing

near the zenith of its luxuriance. The other excursion to Udolpho with
John Mayrant was not so likely to fall through. Udolpho was a sort of

hunting lodge or country club near Tern Creek and an old colonial church,
so old that it bore the royal arms upon a shield still preserved as a

sign of its colonialorigin. A note from Mayrant, received at breakfast,
informed me that the rain would take all pleasure from such an excursion,

and that he should seize the earliest opportunity the weather might
afford to hold me to my promise. The wet gale, even as I sat writing, was

beating down some of the full-blown flowers in the garden next Mrs.
Trevise's house, and as the morning wore on I watched the paths grow more

strewn with broken twigs and leaves.
I filled my correspondence with accounts of Daddy Ben and his grandson,

the carpenter, doubtless from some pride in my part in that, but also
because it had become, through thinking it over, even more interesting

to-day than it had been at the moment of its occurrence; and in replying
to a sort of postscript of Aunt Carola's in which she hurriedly wrote

that she had forgotten to say she had heard the La Heu family in South
Carolina was related to the Bombos, and should be obliged to me if I

would make inquiries about this, I told her that it would be easy, and
then described to her the Teuton, plying his "antiquity" trade externally

while internally cherishing his collected skulls and nursing his
scientific rage. All my letters were the more abundantconcerning these

adventures of mine from my having kept entirely silent upon them at Mrs.
Trevise's tea-table. I dreaded Juno when let loose upon the negro

question; and the fact that I was beginning to understand her feelings
did not at all make me wish to be deafened by them. Neither Juno,

therefore, nor any of them learned a word from me about the
kettle-supporter incident. What I did take pains to inform the assembled

company was my gratification that the report of Mr. Mayrant's engagement
being broken was unfounded; and this caused Juno to observe that in that

case Miss Rieppe must have the most imperative reasons for uniting
herself to such a young man.

Unintimidated by the rain, this formidable creature had taken herself off
to her nephew's bedside almost immediately after breakfast; and later in

the day I, too, risked a drenching for the sake of ordering the
packing-box that I needed. When I returned, it was close on tea-time; I

had seen Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael send out the hot coffee to the
conductor, and I had found a negro carpenter whose week it happily was to

stay sober; and now I learned that, when tea should be finished, the
poetess had in store for us, as a treat, her ode.

Our evening meal was not plain sailing, even for the veteran navigation
of Mrs. Trevise; Juno had returned from the bedside very plainly dis-

pleased (she was always candid even when silent) by something which had
happened there; and before the joyful moment came when we all learned

what this was, a very gouty Boston lady who had arrived with her husband
from Florida on her way North--and whose nature you will readily grasp

when I tell you that we found ourselves speaking of the man as Mrs.
Braintree's husband and never as Mr. Braintree--this crippled lady, who

was of a candor equal to Juno's, embarked upon a conversation with Juno
that compelled Mrs. Trevise to tinkle her bell for Daphne after only two

remarks had been exchanged.
I had been sorry at first that here in this Southern boarding-house

Boston should be represented only by a lady who appeared to unite in
herself all the stony products of that city, and none of the others; for

she was as convivial as a statue and as well-informed as a spelling-book;
she stood no more for the whole of Boston than did Juno for the whole of

Kings Port. But my sorrow grew less when I found that in Mrs. Braintree
we had indeed a capable match for her Southern counterpart. Juno,

according to her custom, had remembered something objectionable that had
been perpetrated in 1865 by the Northern vandals.

"Edward," said Mrs. Braintree to her husband, in a frightfully clear
voice, "it was at Chambersburg, was it not, that the Southern vandals

burned the house in which were your father's title-deeds?"
Edward, who, it appeared, had fought through the whole Civil War, and was

in consequenceperfectly good-humored and peaceable in his feelings upon
that subject, replied hastily and amiably: "Oh, yes, yes! Why, I believe

it was!"
But this availed nothing; Juno bent her great height forward, and

addressed Mrs. Braintree. "This is the first time I have been told
Southerners were vandals."

"You will never be able to say that again!" replied Mrs. Braintree.
After the bell and Daphne had stopped, the invaluable Briton addressed a

genial generalization to us all: "I often think how truly awful your war
would have been if the women had fought it, y'know, instead of the men."

"Quite so!" said the easy-going Edward "Squaws! Mutilation! Yes!" and he
laughed at his little joke, but he laughed alone.

I turned to Juno. "Speaking of mutilation, I trust your nephew is better
this evening."

I was rejoiced by receiving a glare in response. But still more joy was
to come.

"An apology ought to help cure him a lot," observed the Briton.
Juno employed her policy of not hearing him.

"Indeed, I trust that your nephew is in less pain," said the poetess.
Juno was willing to answer this. "The injuries, thank you, are the merest

trifles--all that such a light-weight could inflict." And she shrugged
her shoulders to indicate the futility of young John's pugilism.

"But," the surprised Briton interposed," I thought you said your nephew
was too feeble to eat steak or hear poetry."

Juno could always stem the eddy of her own contradictions--but she did
raise her voice a little. "I fancy, sir, that Doctor Beaugarcon knows

what he is talking about."
"Have they apologized yet?" inquired the male honeymooner from the

up-country.
"My nephew, sir, nobly consented to shake hands this

afternoon. He did it entirely out of respect for Mr. Mayrant's family,
who coerced him into this tardy reparation, and who feel unable to

recognize him since his treasonable attitude in the Custom House."
"Must be fairly hard to coerce a chap you can't recognize," said the

Briton.
An et cetera now spoke to the honeymoon bride from the up-country: "I

heard Doctor Beaugarcon say he was coming to visit you this evening."
"Yais," assented the bride." Doctor Beaugarcon is my mother's fourth

cousin."
Juno now took--most unwisely, as it proved--a vindictive turn at me. "I

knew that your friend, Mr. Mayrant, was intemperate," she began.
I don't think that Mrs. Trevise had any intention to ring for Daphne at