t; even these trees, you might
have supposed, were whispering together over the horrors that I had
recited in their decorous presence.

It was Mrs. Gregory who next spoke. "I can translate that last boy's
language, but what did the other boy mean about a 'raid on Steel
Preferred'--if I've got the jargon right?"

While I translated this for her, I felt again the disapproval in Mrs.
Weguelin's dark eyes; and my sins--for they were twofold--were presently
made clear to me by this lady.

"Are such subjects as--as stocks" (she softly cloaked this word in scorn
immeasurable)--"are such subjects mentioned in your good society at the
North?"

I laughed heartily. "Everything's mentioned!"

The lady paused over my reply. "I am afraid you must feel us to be very
old-fashioned in, Kings Port," she then said.

"But I rejoice in it!"

She ignored my not wholly dexterous compliment. "And some subjects," she
pursued, "seem to us so grave that if we permit ourselves to speak of
them at all we cannot speak of them lightly."

No, they couldn't speak of them lightly! Here, then, stood my two sins
revealed; everything I had imparted, and also my tone of imparting it,
had displeased Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael, not with the thing, but with
me. I had transgressed her sound old American code of good manners,
a code slightly pompous no doubt, but one in which no familiarity was
allowed to breed contempt. To her good taste, there were things in
the world which had, apparently, to exist, but which one banished from
drawing-room discussion as one conceals from sight the kitchen and
outhouses; one dealt with them only when necessity compelled, and never
in small-talk; and here had I been, so to speak, small-talking them in
that glib, modern, irresponsible cadence with which our brazen age rings
and clatters like the beating of triangles and gongs. Not triangles and
gongs, but rather strings and flutes, had been the music to which Kings
Port society had attuned its measured voice.

I saw it all, and even saw that my own dramatic sense of Mrs. Weguelin's
dignity had perversely moved me to be more flippant than I actually
felt; and I promised myself that a more chastened tone should forthwith
redeem me from the false position I had got into.

"My dear," said Mrs. Gregory to Mrs. Weguelin, "we must ask him to
excuse our provincialism."

For the second time I was not wholly dexterous. "But I like it so much!"
I exclaimed; and both ladies lau