I heard such expressions as "And the new mid-iron" . . . "The jasmine
will be in full bloom in a week." "As we were going to Black Jack"
(this is the eighth hole at Aiken, where the holes are all so good that
they are spoken of by name instead of by number). "Mr. Mannering is
the _nicest_ person to ride with," etc., etc.

Then Fulton remembered my existence. "You'll not go without a drink!"
he said.

Mrs. Fulton's eyes confirmed the invitation, so I chucked the reins
over my pony's head to make him think that he was tied to a
hitching-post, and went into the house with them. But I did not stay
long. Fulton wanted to talk golf; Mrs. Fulton wanted to bathe and
change into skirts, and I wanted to go away by myself and think. I
wanted to study out why it was that toward the end of our ride
together, whenever Mrs. Fulton spoke to me or looked back at me over
her shoulder, my pulses seemed to quicken--and my breathing.

V

We were at the beginning of those parlous times when the Democrats,
having come into power upon a wave of impassioned idiocy and jealousy,
were beginning to make us poor at home and despised abroad. A
schoolmaster president, with three cabinet officers plucked by the hair
from a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, had put a temporary end to all our
best qualities as a nation, with the possible exception of the power to
laugh at jokes.

It was a hectic winter in Aiken. Some of the richest members of the
Aiken Club were in trouble. There was some talk of making two and a
half cents a point bridge standard instead of five. Even my own father
asked me to go a little light, if I could, and not be led into any
foolishness. "I've not been hit yet," he said, "but you can't tell
what the fools will do next." You heard very few bets made. There was
less drinking. It was as if certain men were going into training in
order to be at their very best when the worst times should come.

Fulton's Cartridge Company, with its headquarters in New York and its
mills in Bridgeport, Connecticut, had not paid a dividend in some time.
He had only his salary as president (twenty or twenty-five thousand a
year, I believe), and it was with the drastic intention of cutting that
salary in two, and otherwise paring the company's expenses to the
quick, that he went north the first week in March.

I dined with them the night before he left. There were only four of
us: the Fultons, myself, and one of those charming S