wonder! And
Sunday too!"

The old horse, having reached the hilltop, disappeared behind the next
house, and ten minutes later Mrs. Peachey escorted the smallest of his
boxes into his bedroom.

"Your cousin is downstairs, but I didn't know whether you wanted me to
bring her up here or not?" she said.

"Of course you do, don't you, Oliver?" asked Susan's voice, and entering
the room, she coolly presented her cheek to him. This coolness, which
impressed him almost as much as her extraordinary capability, made him
feel sometimes as if she had built a stone wall between them. Years
afterwards he asked himself if this was why his admiration for her had
never warmed into love?

"Well, you're a good one!" he exclaimed, as she drew back from the
casual embrace.

"I knew you were here," she answered, "because John Henry Pendleton"
(was it his imagination or did the faintest blush tinge her face?) "saw
Major Peachey last night and told me on his way home."

"You can't help me straighten up, I suppose? The room looks a sight."

"Not now--I'm on my way to church, and I'll be late if I don't hurry."
She wore a grey cashmere dress, made with a draped polonaise which
accentuated her rather full hips, and a hat with a steeple crown that
did not suit the Treadwell arch of her nose. He thought she looked
plain, but he did not realize that in another dress and hat she might
have been almost beautiful--that she was, indeed, one of those
large-minded, passionately honest women who, in their scorn of pretence
or affectation, rarely condescend to make the best of their appearances.
To have consciously selected a becoming hat would have seemed to her a
species of coquetry, and coquetry, even the most innocent, she held in
abhorrence. Her sincerity was not only intellectual; it was of that
rarer sort which has its root in a physical instinct.

After she had gone, he worked steadily for a couple of hours, and then
opened one of the boxes Susan had brought and arranged a few of his
books in a row on the mantelpiece. It was while he stood still undecided
whether to place "The Origin of Species" or "The Critique of Pure
Reason" on the end nearest his bed, that a knock came at his door, and
the figure of Miss Priscilla Batte, attired in a black silk dolman with
bugle trimmings, stood revealed on the threshold.

"Sally Peachey just told me that you were here," she said, enfolding him
in the embrace which seemed common to Dinwiddie, "so I th