y?"

"At least you dosed them?"

"Yes, I dosed them," he admitted; "but taking medicine isn't a pleasure
that I'd like to pay for."

Turning away, she rustled indignantly through the door, and Dr.
Theophilus, as he returned to the rim of his silver goblet, gave me a
sly wink over his sprigs of mint.

"Yes, Ben, it isn't always the woman who is right that makes a man's
heaven," he said.

CHAPTER XVII

IN WHICH MY FORTUNES RISE

The winter began with a heavy snow-storm and ended in a long April rain,
and in all those swiftly moving months I had seen Sally barely a dozen
times. Not only my pride, but Miss Mitty's rigid commands had kept me
from her house, and the girl had promised that for the first six months
she would not meet me except by chance.

"In the spring--oh, in the spring," she wrote, "I shall be free. My
promise was given and I could not recall it, but I believe now that it
was pride, not love, that made them exact it. Do you know, I sometimes
think that they do not love me at all. They have both told me that they
would rather see me dead than married, as they call it, beneath me.
Beneath me, indeed! Ah, dearest, dearest, how can one lower one's self
to a giant? When I think of all that you are, of all that you have made
yourself, I feel so humble and proud. The truth is, Ben, I'm not
suffering half so much from love as I am from indignation. If it keeps
up, some day I'll burst out like Aunt Matoaca, for I've got it in me.
And she of all people! Why, she goes about in her meek, sanctified
manner distributing pamphlets on the emancipation of woman, and yet she
actually told me the other day that, of course, she would prefer to have
only 'ladies' permitted to vote. 'In that case, however,' she added, 'I
should desire to restrict the franchise to gentlemen, also.' Did you
ever in your whole life hear of anything so absurd, and she really meant
it. She's a martyr, and filled with a holy zeal to get burned or racked.
But it's awful, every bit of it. Oh, lift me up, Ben! Lift me up!" And
in a postscript, "What does the General say to you? Aunt Mitty has told
the General."

The General had said nothing to me, but when I drove him up from his
office the next day, he invited me to dine with him, and talked
incessantly through the three simple courses about the prospects of the
National Oil Company.

"So you're sweeping the whole South?" he said.

"Yes, Sam has made a big thing of it. We've knocke