gayly celebrating the end of the war and
every crow was busy pecking at the sensitive heart of their leader, the
ominous shadow of five hundred thousand Northern soldiers, armed with
the best weapons and drilled by the masters of military science, was
slowly but surely drawing near.

CHAPTER XIX

SOCOLA'S PROBLEM

Socola found his conquest of Jennie beset with unforeseen difficulties.
His vanity received a shock. His success with girls at home had slightly
turned his head.

His mother was largely responsible for his conceit. She honestly
believed that he was the handsomest man in America. For more than six
years--in fact, since his eighteenth birthday--his mother's favorite pet
name was "Handsome." He had heard this repeated so often he had finally
accepted it philosophically as one of the fixed phenomena of nature.

From the moment he made up his mind to win Jennie he considered the work
done--until he had set seriously about it.

The first difficulty he encountered was the discovery that a large
number of Southern boys apparently considered the chief business of life
going to see the girls--this girl in particular.

The first day he called he found five young men who had lingered beyond
their appointed hours and were encroaching on his time without the
slightest desire to apologize. He could see that she was trying to get
rid of them but they hung on with a dogged, quiet persistence that was
annoying beyond measure.

War seemed to have precipitated an epidemic of furious love-making. He
watched Jennie twist these enterprising young Southerners around her
slender fingers with an ease that was alarming. They were fine-looking,
wholesome fellows, too--a little given to boyish boasting of military
prowess, but for all that genuine, serious, big-hearted boys.

The matter-of-fact way in which she ruled them, as if she were a queen
born to the royal purple and they were so many lackeys, was something
new under the sun.

For a moment the thought was cheering. Perhaps it was her way of serving
notice on his rivals that her real interests lay in another direction.
But the disconcerting thing about it was that it seemed to be a habit of
mind.

For the life of him he couldn't make out her real attitude. The one
encouraging feature was that she certainly treated him with more
seriousness than these home boys. It might be, of course, because she
thought him a foreigner. And yet he didn't believe it. She had a