a grin.

The hour of nine struck. Fair looked startled. "Were we not to have
joined Mr. Ravenel's party in Suez by this time?"

"Yes, but there's no hurry. Still, we'll start. Johanna, get your
lunch-baskets. Sorry you don't meet Mr. March, sir; he's a trifle
younger than you, but you'd like him. I asked him to go with us, but his
mother--why, wa'n't that all right, Barb?"

"Oh, it wasn't wrong." Barbara smiled to her mother. "It was only
useless; he always declines if I don't. We're very slightly acquainted.
I hope that accounts for it." She arched her brows.

As she and the young visitor stood by the carriage while Johanna and the
luncheon were being stowed he said something so graceful about Mrs.
Garnet that Barbara looked into his face with delight and the Major had
to speak his name twice befor he heard it.--"Ready? Yes, quite so. Shall
I sit--oh! pardon; yes--in front, certainly."

The Major drove. The young guest would gladly have talked with Barbara
as she sat back of him and behind her father; but Garnet held his
attention. Crossing Turkey Creek battle-ground----

"Just look at those oats! See that wheat! Cotton, ah, but you ought to
see the cotton down in Blackland!"

When the pike was dusty and the horses walked they were frequently
overtaken and passed by cavalcades of lank, hard-faced men in dingy
homespun, and cadaverous women with snuff-sticks and slouched
sun-bonnets. Major Garnet bowed to them.

"Those are our Sandstone County mountaineers; our yeomanry, sir. Suez
holds these three counties in a sort o' triple alliance. You make a
great mistake, sir, to go off to-morrow without seeing the Widewood
district. You've seen the Alps, and I'd just like to hear you say which
of the two is the finer. There's enough mineral wealth in Widewood alone
to make Suez a Pittsburg, and water-power enough to make her a
Minneapolis, and we're going to make her both, sir!" The monologue
became an avalanche of coal, red hematite, marble, mica, manganese, tar,
timber, turpentine, lumber, lead, ochre, and barytes, with signs of
silver, gold, and diamonds.

"Don't you think, however----"

"No, sir! no-o-o! far from it----"

A stifled laugh came from where Johanna's face darkened the corner it
occupied. Barbara looked, but the maid seemed lost in sad reverie.

"Barb, yonder's where Jeff-Jack and I stopped to dine on blackberries
the day we got home from the war. Now, there's the railroad cut on the
far side of it