ilver wedding anniversary. The windows
were open, and Barclay could hear the men's voices, and he knew
vaguely that they were talking of Lige Bemis. For Barclay had
tactfully asked the colonel as a favour to invite Mr. and Mrs. Bemis
to the silver wedding reception. So the Bemises came. Mrs. Bemis, who
was rather stout, even for a woman in her early forties, wore black
satin and jet ornaments, including black jet ear bobs of tremendous
size. And Watts McHurdie was so touched by the way ten years under a
roof had tamed the woman whom he had known of old as "Happy Hallie,"
that he wrote a poem for the _Banner_ about the return of the
"Prodigal Daughter," which may be found in Garrison County scrap-books
of that period. As for Mr. Bemis, he went slinking about the outskirts
of the crowd, showing his teeth considerably, and making it obvious
that he was there.

So as John Barclay rode his "Evening Star" to glory, in the next room
General Ward turned to the colonel, who stood puffing in the doorway
of the general's law-office. "Martin, did John Barclay make you invite
that woman to your house--that Bemis woman?"

The colonel got his breath slowly after climbing the stair, and he did
not reply at once. But he smiled, and stood with his arms akimbo a few
seconds before he spoke. "Well now, General--since you ask it, I may
as well confess it pointedly--I am ashamed to say he did!"

Ward motioned the colonel to a seat and asked impatiently, "Ashamed?"

"Well," responded Culpepper, as he put his feet in the window ledge,
"she's as good as I am--if you come down to that! Why shouldn't I,
who pretend to be a gentleman,--a Virginia gentleman, I may say,
sir,--why shouldn't I be ashamed, disgraced, sir, disgraced in point
of fact, that I had to be forced to invite any person in all God's
beautiful world to my home?"

Ward looked at the colonel coldly a moment and then blurted out: "Ah,
shucks, sir--stuff and nonsense! You know what she was before the
war--Happy Hally! My gracious, Martin, how could you?"

Martin Culpepper brought his chair down with a bang and turned
squarely to Ward. "General, the war's over now. I knew Happy
Hally--and I knew the Red Legs she trained with. And we're making
senators and governors and state officers and indeed, I may say,
prominent citizens out of them. Why not give Hally her show? You damn
cold-nosed Yankee Brahmins--you have Faith and you have Hope, but you
have no more Charity than a sausag