"There's no hurry, Sally," he added; "they started over to condole with
you, I imagine, but they've both become so absorbed in discussing this
neighbourhood as it was fifty years ago, that I honestly believe they've
entirely forgotten that you live here."

"Well, we'll have to remind them," said Sally, with a laugh; and when
she had rolled down her sleeves and tidied her hair before the cracked
mirror on the wall, we went back to the house, where we found the two
old men engaged in a violent controversy over the departed inhabitants
of Church Hill.

"I tell you, Theophilus, it wasn't Robert Carrington, but his brother
Bushrod that lived in that house!" exclaimed the General, as we entered;
and he concluded--while he shook hands with us, in the tone of one who
forever clinches an argument, "I can take you this minute straight over
there to his grave in Saint John's Churchyard. How are you, Ben, glad to
see you up," he observed in an absent-minded manner. "Have you got a
palm-leaf fan around, Sally? I can't get through these sweltering
afternoons without a fan. What do you think Theophilus is arguing about
now? He is trying to prove to me that it was Robert Carrington, not
Bushrod, who lived in that big house at the top of the hill. Why, I tell
you I knew Bushrod Carrington as well as I did my own brother, sir."

He sat far back in his chair, pursing his full red lips angrily, like a
whimpering child, and fanning himself with short, excited movements of
the palm-leaf fan. His determined, mottled face was covered thickly with
fine drops of perspiration.

"I knew Robert very intimately," remarked the doctor, in a peaceable
voice. "He married Matty Price, and I was the best man at his wedding.
They lived unhappily, I believe, but he told me on his death-bed--I
attended him in his last illness--that he would do it over again if he
had to re-live his life. 'I never had a dull minute after I married her,
doctor,' he said, 'I lived with her for forty years and I never knew
what was coming next till she died.'"

"Robert was a fool," commented the General, brusquely, "a long
white-livered, studious fellow that dragged around at his wife's apron
strings. Couldn't hold a candle to his brother Bushrod. When I was a
boy, Bushrod Carrington--he was nearer my father's age than mine--was
the greatest dandy and duellist in the state. Got all his clothes in
Paris, and I can see him now, as plainly as if it were yesterday, when
he