f Phyl had been delightful, then, little by little,
her stiffness and seeming lifelessness had communicated themselves to him.
It seemed to him that he had never met a duller or more awkward
schoolgirl. His mind was of that quick order which requires to be caught
in the uptake rapidly in order to shine. Slowness, coldness, dulness or
hesitancy in others depressed him just as dull weather depressed him. He
did not at all know with what a burning interest his arrival had been
awaited, or the effect that his voice had produced and his first
appearance. He did not know how the dull schoolgirl had weighed him in a
mysterious balance which she herself did not quite comprehend and had
found him slightly wanting. Neither could he tell the extent of the
paralyses produced in that same mind of hers by the cracked china, the old
dish cover, Byrne's awkwardness, and the deboshed crumb-brush.

He should have kept to his first impression of her, for first impressions
are nearly always right; he should have sought for the reason of so much
charm proving charmless, so much positive attraction proving so negative
in effect. But he did not. He just took her as he found her and was glad
she was gone.

"And I believe," said Hennessey, "the South is different now. It used to
be all cotton before the war."

"Oh, no," said Pinckney. "Before the war there was a lot of cotton grown
but we used to grow other things as well, we used to feed ourselves, the
plantation was economically independent. The war broke us. We had to get
money, so we grew cotton as cotton was never grown before; the South
became a great sheet of cotton. You see, cotton is the only crop you can
mortgage, so we grew cotton and mortgaged it. Of course the old-time
planter is gone, everything is done now by companies, and that's the devil
of it--"

Pinckney was silent for a moment and sat staring before him as though he
were looking at the Past.

"Companies, you see, don't grow sunflowers to look at, don't grow trees to
shade them, don't make love in a wild and extravagant manner and shoot
other companies for crossing them in their affections--don't play the
guitar, in short.

"Companies don't breed trotting horses and wear panama hats and put
flowers in their buttonholes. The old Planter used to do these things and
a lot of others. He was a bit of a patriarch in his way, too--well, he's
gone and more's the pity. He's like an old house pulled down. No one can
ever build