. "Look here: somebody's got to protect that
Sophy woman against Nicholas Jelnik!"

CHAPTER XI

THE JINNEE INTERVENES

Just before he went back North, Luis Morenas good-naturedly agreed
to exhibit his new sketches for the delectation of such folk as we
cared to ask to view them--this to please Alicia, whom he called
Flower o' the Peach.

Now an exhibit of Morenas sketches would have been an art event in
the Biggest City itself. But think of it in Hyndsville, where few
worth-while things ever happened; and imagine the polite
wire-pulling for invitations that ensued!

It wasn't my fault that I couldn't ask the whole town to come to my
house to see those brilliant sketches. I would have done so with all
my heart, but there was a section of Hyndsville I couldn't reach. It
was locked up behind bars of pride and prejudice of its own
building; and losing by it, of course, since one can't be exclusive
without at the same time being excluded. To shut other folks out you
have first got to shut yourself in.

For instance, figure to yourself Miss Martha Hopkins. She had
visited as far north as Atlanta; and she had relatives in
Charleston, as she would have condescendingly informed arch-angels,
principalities, powers, thrones, and dominions. But she wasn't
blessed with much of this world's goods, and most of the time she
stayed home and improved her mind. She took herself with profound
seriousness. She seemed to think that the better part of wisdom
consists in knowing who said this and who didn't say that--"as Mr.
Arnold Bennett expresses it," "as Mr. H.G. Wells remarks," "as Mr.
James Huneker writes,"--she was the only person in all Hyndsville
who could write up music and art, and she wasn't even afraid to use
the word _sex_ in its most modern acceptance; though in South
Carolina you refer to the ladies as "the fair sex" if you're a
gentleman, and to the gentlemen as "the stronger sex" if you're a
lady. You understand that "male and female created He them," and you
let it go at that. Miss Martha Hopkins, then, was daring; she was
also exclusive.

I suppose if I had been younger I could have smiled at Miss Martha,
as Susy Gatchell and her graceless friends did, but somehow she
appeared to me a creature trying to peck at the world and peek at
the stars through the bars of a bird-cage. That's why, when I met
her a morning or two before the Morenas exhibit, I asked her if she
wouldn't like to see it. I knew that, onc