Mayrant, the cards, and the bedside.

The curly dog came out, and went through his part very graciously.

"I can guess his last name," I remarked.

"General's? How? Oh, you've heard it! I don't believe in you any more."

"That's not a bit handsome, after my confession. No, I'm getting to
understand South Carolina a little. You came from the 'up-country,' you
call your dog General; his name is General Hampton!"

Her laughter assented. "Tell me some more about South Carolina," she
added with her caressing insinuation.

"Well, to begin with--"

"Go sit down at your lunch-table first. Aunt Josephine would never
tolerate my encouraging gentlemen to talk to me over the counter."

I went back obediently, and then resumed: "Well, what sort of people are
those who own the handsome garden behind Mrs. Trevise's!"

"I don't know them."

"Thank you; that's all I wanted."

"What do you mean?"

"They're new people. I could tell it from the way you stuck your nose in
the air."

"Sir!"

"Oh, if you talk about my hair, I can talk about your nose, I think.
I suspected that they were: 'new people' because they cleaned up their
garden immediately after the storm this morning. Now, I'll tell you
something else: the whole South looks down on the whole North."

She made her voice kind. "Do you mind it very much?"

I joined in her latent mirth. "It makes life not worth living! But more
than this, South Carolina looks down on the whole South."

"Not Virginia."

"Not? An 'entire stranger,' you know, sometimes notices things which
escape the family eye--family likenesses in the children, for instance."

"Never Virginia," she persisted.

"Very well, very well! Somehow you've admitted the rest, however."

She began to smile.

"And next, Kings Port looks down on all the rest of South Carolina."

She now laughed outright. "An up-country girl will not deny that,
anyhow!"

"And finally, your aunts--"

"My aunts are Kings Port."

"The whole of it?"

"If you mean the thirty thousand negroes--"

"No, there are other white people here--there goes your nose again!"

"I will not have you so impudent, sir!"

"A thousand pardons, I'm on my knees. But your aunts--" There was such a
flash of war in her eye that I stopped.

"May I not even mention them?" I asked her.

And suddenly upon this she became serious and gentle. "I thought that
you understood them. Would you take them from their seclusion, too? It
is all they hav