harming, and without vanity, when in the midst of men; but let so much
as the rustle of a petticoat sound on the pavement, and he would begin
to strut and plume himself as instinctively as the cock in the barnyard.

"But what would you do with a vote, my dear Miss Matoaca," he protested
airily. "Put it into a pie?"

His witticism, which he hardly seemed aware of until it was uttered,
afforded him the next instant an enjoyment so hilarious that I saw his
waist shake like a bowl of jelly between the flapping folds of his
alpaca coat. While he stood there with his large white cravat twisted
awry by the swelling of his crimson neck, and his legs, in a pair of
duck trousers, planted very far apart on the sidewalk, he presented the
aspect of a man who felt himself to be a graduate in the experimental
science of what he probably would have called "the sex." When I heard
him frequently alluded to afterwards as "a gay old bird," I wondered
that I had not fitted the phrase to him as he fixed his swimming,
parrot-like eyes on the flushed face of Miss Matoaca.

"If that's all the use you'd make of it, I think we might safely trust
it to you," he observed with a flattering glance. "A woman who can make
your mince pies, dear lady, need not worry about her rights."

"How is George, General?" asked Miss Matoaca, with an air of gentle,
offended dignity. "I heard he had come to live with you since his
mother's death."

"So he has, the rascal," responded the General, "and a nephew under
twelve years of age is a severe strain on the habits of an elderly
bachelor."

The corners of Miss Matoaca's mouth grew suddenly prim.

"I suppose you could hardly close the door on your sister's orphan son,"
she observed, in a severer tone than I had yet heard her use.

He sighed, and the sigh appeared to pass in the form of a tremor through
his white-trousered legs.

"Ah, that's it," he rejoined. "You ladies ought to be thankful that you
haven't our responsibilities. No, no, thank you, I won't come in. My
respects to Miss Mitty and to yourself."

The gate closed softly as if after a love tryst, Miss Matoaca
disappeared into the garden, and the General's expression changed from
its jocose and smiling flattery to a look of genuine annoyance.

"No, I don't want a paper, boy!" he exclaimed.

With a wave of his gold-headed cane in my direction, he would have
passed on his way, but at his first step, happily for me, his toe struck
against a loose