tself into an angry and childish
expression. He was paying the inevitable price, I gathered, for his
career as "a gay old bird"; but even in the rebuking glance which Dr.
Theophilus now bent upon him, I read the recognition that the president
of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad must be dosed more
sparingly than other men. Under his loose, puffy chin he wore a loose,
puffy tie of a magenta shade, in the midst of which a single black pearl
reposed; and when he turned his head, the creases in his neck looked
like white cords sunk deep in the scarlet flesh.

"There's no use, Theophilus, I can't stand it," he protested. "Delilah,
bring me a sip of whiskey to put a taste in my mouth."

"No whiskey, Delilah, not a drop," commanded the doctor sternly. "It's
the result of your own imprudence, George, and you've got to pay for it.
You've been eating strawberries, and I told you not to touch one with a
ten-foot pole."

"You didn't say a word about strawberry shortcake," rejoined the
General, like a guilty child, "and this attack is due to an entirely
different cause. I dined at the Blands' on Sunday, and Miss Mitty gave
me mint sauce on my lamb. I never could abide mint sauce."

Taking out his prescription book the doctor wrote down a prescription in
a single word, which looked ominously like "calomel" from a distance.

"How did Miss Matoaca seem?" he asked, while Robin, the old pointer,
came and sniffed at my ankles, and I thought of Samuel, sleeping under a
flower bed in the doctor's garden. "She has a touch of malaria, and I
ordered her three grains of quinine every morning."

A purple flush mounted to the General's face, which, if I could have
read it by the light of history, would have explained the scornful
flattery in his attitude toward "the sex." It was easy to catch the
personal note in his piquant allusions to "the ladies," though an
instinct, which he would probably have called a principle, kept them
always within the bounds of politeness. Later I was to learn that Miss
Matoaca had been the most ardent, if by no means the only, romance of
his youth; and that because of some headstrong and indelicate opinions
of hers on the subject of masculine morals, she had, when confronted
with tangible proofs of the General's airy wanderings, hopelessly
severed the engagement within a few weeks of the marriage. To a gay
young bird the prospect of a storm in a nest had been far from
attractive; and after a fierce