him, as Juno would have said. He wore somewhat the look of having been
"coerced," and he contributed remarkably few observations to the talk.

It was all harmonious, and decorous, and properly conducted, this state
visit; yet even so, Juno and John exchanged at parting some verbal
sweet-meats which rather stuck out from the smooth meringue of
diplomacy.

She contemplated his bruise. "You are feeling stronger, I hope, than you
have been lately? A bridegroom's health should be good."

He thanked her. "I am feeling better to-night than for many weeks."

The rascal had the thirty dollars visibly bulging that moment in his
pocket. I doubt if he had acquainted his aunt with this episode, but she
was certain to hear it soon; and when she did hear it, I rather fancy
that she wished to smile--as I completely smiled alone in my bed that
night thinking young John over.

But I did not go to sleep smiling; listening to the "Ode for the
Daughters of Dixie" had been an ordeal too truly painful, because it
disclosed live feelings which I had thought were dead, or rather, it
disclosed that those feelings smouldered in the young as well as in the
old. Doctor Beaugarcon didn't have them--he had fought them out, just
as Mr. Braintree had fought them out; and Mrs. Braintree, like Juno,
retained them, because she hadn't fought them out; and John Mayrant
didn't have them, because he had been to other places; and I didn't have
them--never had had them in my life, because I came into the world when
it was all over. Why then--Stop, I told myself, growing very wakeful,
and seeing in the darkness the light which had come to me, you have
beheld the ashes, and even the sight has overwhelmed you; these others
were born in the ashes, and have had ashes to sleep in and ashes to eat.
This I said to myself; and I remembered that War hadn't been all; that
Reconstruction came in due season; and I thought of the "reconstructed"
negro, as Daddy Ben had so ingeniously styled him. These white people,
my race, had been set beneath the reconstructed negro. Still, still,
this did not justify the whole of it to me; my perfectly innocent
generation seemed to be included in the unforgiving, unforgetting ode.
"I must have it out with somebody," I said. And in time I fell asleep.

XIII: The Girl Behind the Counter--III

I was still thinking the ode over as I dressed for breakfast, for which
I was late, owing to my hair, which the changes in the weather had