ckened chimneys of the
town unsoftened by any shadow of illusion. Presently, as the sunlight
fell aslant the winding streets, there was a faint stir in the house;
but since the day was Sunday, and Dinwiddie observed the Sabbath by
sleeping late, this stir was slow and drowsy, like the movement of
people but half awake. First, a dilapidated milk wagon rumbled through
the alleys to the back gates, where dishevelled negro maids ran out with
earthenware pitchers, which went back foaming around the brims. Then the
doors of the houses opened slowly; the green outside shutters were flung
wide; and an army of coloured servants bearing brooms, appeared on the
porches, and made expressive gestures to one another over the railings.
Occasionally, when one lifted a doormat in order to beat the dust out of
it, she would forget to put it down again while she stared after the
milk cart. Nobody--not even the servants--seemed to regard the wasted
hours as of any importance. It struck Oliver that the only use Dinwiddie
made of time was to kill it.

He fell to work with enthusiasm, and he was still working when the
reverberations of the breakfast bell thundered in his ears. Going
downstairs to the dining-room, he found several thin and pinched looking
young women, with their hats on and Sunday-school lessons beside their
plates. Mrs. Peachey, still smiling her quizzical smile, sat at the head
of the table, pouring coffee out of an old silver coffee-pot, which was
battered in on one side as if it had seen active service in the war.
When, after a few hurried mouthfuls, he asked permission to return to
his work, she received his excuses with the same cheerful acquiescence
with which she accepted the decrees of Providence. It is doubtful,
indeed, if her serenity, which was rooted in an heroic hopelessness,
could have been shaken either by the apologies of a boarder or by the
appearance of an earthquake. Her happiness was of that invulnerable sort
which builds its nest not in the luxuriant gardens of the emotions, but
in the bare, rock-bound places of the spirit. Courage, humour, an
adherence to conviction which is wedded to an utter inability to respect
any opinion except one's own; loyalty which had sprung from a principle
into a passion; a fortifying trust, less in the Power that rules the
universe than in the peculiar virtues of the Episcopal prayer-book when
bound in black; a capacity for self-sacrifice which had made the South a
nation of