nt, and an arriving sweetheart, and
imminent wedlock, he hadn't forgotten to stop "taking orders from a
negro" at the very first opportunity which came to him; his phosphates
had done this for him, at least, and I should have the pleasure of
correcting Juno at tea.

But I did not have this pleasure. They were all in an excitement over
something else, and my own different excitement hadn't a chance against
this greater one; for people seldom wish to hear what you have to say,
even under the most favorable circumstances, and never when they have
anything to say themselves. With an audience so hotly preoccupied I
couldn't have sat on Juno effectively at all, and therefore I kept it
to myself, and attended very slightly to what they were telling me about
the Daughters of Dixie.

I bowed absently to the poetess. "And your poem?" I said. "A great
success, I am sure?"

"Why, didn't you hear me say so?" said the upcountry bride; and then,
after a smile at the others, "I'm sure your flowers were graciously
accepted."

"Ask Miss Josephine St. Michael," I replied.

"Oh, oh, oh!" went the bride. "How would she know?"

I gave myself no pains to improve or arrest this tiresome joke, and they
went back to their Daughters of Dixie; but it is rather singular how
sometimes an utterly absurd notion will be the cause of our taking a
step which we had not contemplated. I did carry some flowers to Miss La
Heu the next day. I was at some trouble to find any; for in Kings Port
shops of this kind are by no means plentiful, and it was not until I had
paid a visit to a quite distant garden at the extreme northwestern edge
of the town that I lighted upon anything worthy of the girl behind the
counter. The Exchange itself was apt to have flowers for sale, but I
hardly saw my way to buying them there, and then immediately offering
them to the fair person who had sold them to me. As it was, I did much
better; for what I brought her were decidedly superior to any that were
at the Exchange when I entered it at lunch time.

They were, as the up-country bride would have put it, "graciously
accepted." Miss La Heu stood them in water on the counter beside her
ledger. She was looking lovely.

"I expected you yesterday," she said. "The new Lady Baltimore was
ready."

"Well, if it is not all eaten yet--"

"Oh, no! Not a slice gone."

"Ah, nobody does your art justice here!"

"Go and sit down at your table, please."

It was really quite diffi