accusation. It's condolence. I am sorry for both of us,
George, that we can't sit there under the trees and eat out of a basket
and have spiders and ants in things and not mind it. Here we are in the
land of Smithfield hams and spoon-bread and we ate canned lobster for
lunch, and alligator pear salad."

"Baked ham and spoon-bread--for our sins?"

"It is because you and I have missed the baked ham and spoon-bread
atmosphere, that we are bored to death, Georgie. Everything in our lives
is the same wherever we go. When we are in Virginia we ought to do as
the Virginians do, and instead Oscar Waterman brings a little old New
York with him. It's Rome for the Romans, Georgie, lobsters in New
England, avocados in Los Angeles, hog and hominy here."

There were others listening now, and she was aware of her amused
audience.

"If you don't like my little old New York," Waterman said, "I'll change
it."

"No, I am going back to the real thing, Oscar. To my sky-scrapers and
subways. You can't give us those down here--not yet. Perhaps some day
there will be a system of camouflage by which no matter where we are--in
desert or mountain, we can open our windows to the Woolworth Building
on the skyline or the Metropolitan Tower, or to Diana shooting at the
stars,--and have some little cars in tunnels to run us around your
estate."

"By Jove, Jefferson nearly did it," said Waterman; "you should see the
subterranean passages at Monticello for the servants, so that the guests
could look over the grounds without a woolly head in sight."

"Great old boob, Jefferson," said Waterman's wife, Flora.

"No," Madge's eyes went out over the hills to where Monticello brooded
over great memories, "he was not a boob. He was so big that little
people like us can't focus him, Flora."

She came down from her perch. "I adore great men," she said; "when I go
back, I shall make a pilgrimage to Oyster Bay. I wonder how many of us
who weep over Great heart's grave would have voted for him if he had
lived. In a sense we crucified him."

"Madge is serious," said Flora Waterman, "now what do you think of
that?"

"I have to be serious sometimes, Flora, to balance the rest of you. You
can be as gay as you please when I am gone, and if you perish, you
perish."

George walked beside her as the party moved towards the grandstand.
"I've half a mind to go to New York with you, Madge. I came down on your
account."

"It's because you followed me that I'm