, a most outrageous posy pinned upon
him by way of honor, and whistling a Slavic love song so dismal that
one inferred love must be something like toothache for painfulness. He
had had such a bully time, he told me. Big Jan had been there with his
wife, an old friend of Michael's Katya. Although pale, and still
somewhat shaky as to legs, Jan had willingly enough shaken hands with
his conqueror.

It seemed quite right and natural that he and Jan should presently
enter into a sort of Dual Alliance. Meester Fleent was to be
Arbitrator Extraordinary. When he stipulated that thereafter Big Jan
was only to tackle a man his own size, everybody cheered madly, and
Mrs. Jan herself beamed red-eyed approval. She said her prayers to the
man who had trounced Jan into righteousness.

But from the Eustis dinner, to which he went with my mother, he came
home somber and heavy-hearted. Laurence was conspicuously absent; it
is true he was away, defending his first big case in another part of
the State. But Mr. George Inglesby was just as conspicuously present,
apparently on the best of all possible terms with himself, the world
in general, and Mrs. James Eustis in particular. His presence in that
house, in the face of persistent rumors, made at least two guests
uneasy. Mrs. Eustis showed him a most flattering attention. She was
deeply impressed by him. He had just aided her pet mission in
China--what he had given the heathen would have buttered my children's
bread for many a day. Also, he was all but lyrical in his voicing of
the shibboleth that Woman's Sphere is the Home, wherein she should be
adored, enshrined, and protected. Woman and the Home! All the innate
chivalry of Southern manhood--

I don't know that Louisa's Ma was ever enshrined or protected by the
chivalry of any kind of manhood, no, nor any of the mill women. Their
kind don't know the word. But Mrs. Eustis was, and she agreed with Mr.
Inglesby's noble sentiments.

"Parson, you should have heard him!" raved the Butterfly Man. "There's
a sort of man down here that's got chivalry like another sort's got
hookworm, and he makes the man that hasn't got either want to set up
an image to the great god Dam!

"You'd think being chivalrous would be enough for him, wouldn't you?"
continued the Butterfly Man, bitterly. "Nix! What's he been working
the heavy charity lay for, except that it's his turn to be a
misunderstood Christian? Doesn't charity cover a multitude of skins,
thou