r
with a man than the tallest grandfather that ever lived." For a moment
he was silent, and then he spoke softly, unconscious that he uttered his
thought aloud. "No, Matoaca's birth, whatever it might have been,
couldn't have come between us--it was her damned principles."

He looked tired and old, now that his armour of business had dropped
from him, as he sat there, with the fur rug drawn over his chest, and
his loose lower lip hanging slightly away from his shrunken gums. A
sudden pity, the first I had ever dared feel for the president of the
Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad, shot through my heart. The
gay old bird, I told myself, was shedding his plumage at last.

"Well, as long as I can't rest on my birth, I might as well stand up on
something," I said.

"Women think a lot of it," he resumed, as if he had not noticed my
flippant interjection; "and I reckon it about fits the size of their
minds. Why, to hear Miss Mitty Bland talk you would think good birth was
the only virtue she admitted to the first rank. I was telling her about
you," he added with a chuckle, "and you've got sense enough to see the
humour of what she said."

"I hope I have, General."

"Well, I began it by boasting about your looks, Ben, if you don't mind.
'That wonderful boy of ours is the finest-looking fellow in the South
to-day, Miss Mitty,' I burst out, 'and he stands six feet two in his
stockings.' 'Ah, General,' she replied sadly, 'what are six feet two
inches without a grandfather?'"

He threw back his head with a roar, appearing a trifle chagrined the
next instant by my faint-hearted pretence of mirth.

"Doesn't it tickle you, Ben?" he enquired, checking his laughter.

"I'm afraid it makes me rather angry, General," I answered.

"Oh, well, I didn't think you'd take it seriously. It's just a joke, you
know. Go ahead and make your fortune, and they'll receive you quick
enough."

"But they have received me. They asked me to their party."

"That was Sally, my boy--it was her party, and she fought the ladies for
you. That girl's a born fighter, and I reckon she gets it from Harry
Mickleborough--for the only blessed thing he could do was to fight. He
was a mighty poor man, was Harry, but a God Almighty soldier--and he
sent more Yankees to glory than any single man in the whole South. The
girl gets it from him, and she hasn't any of her aunts' aristocratic
nonsense in her either. She told Miss Mitty, on the spot, and I can s