he refused to
include the house and potato-patch in the property. When the company
had yielded the point, he declined, with equal tenacity, to part with
it to outside speculators on even the most extravagant offers. In vain
Mrs. Mulrady protested; in vain she pointed out to him that the
retention of the evidence of his former humble occupation was a green
blot upon their social escutcheon.

"If you will keep the land, build on it, and root up the garden." But
Mulrady was adamant.

"It's the only thing I ever made myself, and got out of the soil with
my own hands; it's the beginning of my fortune, and it may be the end
of it. Mebbee I'll be glad enough to have it to come back to some day,
and be thankful for the square meal I can dig out of it."

By repeated pressure, however, Mulrady yielded the compromise that a
portion of it should be made into a vineyard and flower-garden, and by
a suitable coloring of ornament and luxury obliterate its vulgar part.
Less successful, however, was that energetic woman in another effort to
mitigate the austerities of their earlier state. It occurred to her to
utilize the softer accents of Don Caesar in the pronunciation of their
family name, and privately had "Mulrade" take the place of Mulrady on
her visiting card. "It might be Spanish," she argued with her husband.
"Lawyer Cole says most American names are corrupted, and how do you
know that yours ain't?" Mulrady, who would not swear that his
ancestors came from Ireland to the Carolinas in '98, was helpless to
refute the assertion. But the terrible Nemesis of an un-Spanish,
American provincial speech avenged the orthographical outrage at once.
When Mrs. Mulrady began to be addressed orally, as well as by letter,
as "Mrs. Mulraid," and when simple amatory effusions to her daughter
rhymed with "lovely maid," she promptly refused the original vowel. But
she fondly clung to the Spanish courtesy which transformed her
husband's baptismal name, and usually spoke of him--in his absence--as
"Don Alvino." But in the presence of his short, square figure, his
orange tawny hair, his twinkling gray eyes, and retrousse nose, even
that dominant woman withheld his title. It was currently reported at
Red Dog that a distinguished foreigner had one day approached Mulrady
with the formula, "I believe I have the honor of addressing Don Alvino
Mulrady?" "You kin bet your boots, stranger, that's me," had returned
that simple hidalgo.

Although