I was still thinking the ode over as I dressed for breakfast, for which I was late, owing to my hair, which the changes in the weather had rendered somewhat recalcitrant. Yes; decidedly I must have it out with somebody. The weather was once more superb; and in the garden beneath my window men were already sweeping away the broken twigs and debris of the storm. I say "already," because it had not seemed to me to be the Kings Port custom to remove debris, or anything, with speed. I also had it in my mind to perform at lunch Aunt Carola's commission, and learn if the family of La Heu were indeed of royal descent through the Bombos. I intended to find this out from the girl behind the counter, but the course which our conversation took led me completely to forget about it.

As soon as I entered the Exchange I planted myself in front of the counter, in spite of the discouragement which I too plainly perceived in her countenance; the unfavorable impression which I had made upon her at our last interview was still in force.

I plunged into it at once. "I have a confession to make."

"You do me surprising honor."

"Oh, now, don't begin like that! I suppose you never told a lie."

"I'm telling the truth now when I say that I do not see why an entire stranger should confess anything to me."

"Oh, my goodness! Well, I told you a lie, anyhow; a great, successful, deplorable lie."

She opened her mouth under the shock of it, and I recited to her unsparingly my deception; during this recital her mouth gradually closed.

"Well, I declare, declare, declare!" she slowly and deliciously breathed over the sum total; and she considered me at length, silently, before her words came again, like a soft soliloquy. "I could never have believed it in one who"--here gayety flashed in her eyes suddenly--"parts his back hair so rigidly. Oh, I beg your pardon for being personal!" And her gayety broke in ripples. Some habitual instinct moved me to turn to the looking-glass. "Useless!" she cried, "you can't see it in that. But it's perfectly splendid to-day."

Nature has been kind to me in many ways--nay, prodigal; it is not every man who can perceive the humor in a jest of which he is himself the subject. I laughed with her. "I trust that I am forgiven," I said.

"Oh, yes, you are forgiven! Come out, General, and give the gentleman your right paw, and tell him that he is forgiven--if only for the sake of Daddy Ben." With these latter words she gave me a gracious nod of understanding. They were all thanking me for the kettle-supporter! She probably knew also the tale of John Mayrant, the cards, and the bedside.

The curly dog came out, and went through his part very graciously.

"I can guess his last name," I remarked.

"General's? How? Oh, you've heard it! I don't believe in you any more."

"That's not a bit handsome, after my confession. No, I'm getting to understand South Carolina a little. You came from the 'up-country,' you call your dog General; his name is General Hampton!"

Her laughter assented. "Tell me some more about South Carolina," she added with her caressing insinuation.

"Well, to begin with--"

"Go sit down at your lunch-table first. Aunt Josephine would never tolerate my encouraging gentlemen to talk to me over the counter."

I went back obediently, and then resumed: "Well, what sort of people are those who own the handsome garden behind Mrs. Trevise's!"

"I don't know them."

"Thank you; that's all I wanted."

"What do you mean?"

"They're new people. I could tell it from the way you stuck your nose in the air."

"Sir!"

"Oh, if you talk about my hair, I can talk about your nose, I think. I suspected that they were: 'new people' because they cleaned up their garden immediately after the storm this morning. Now, I'll tell you something else: the whole South looks down on the whole North."

She made her voice kind. "Do you mind it very much?"

I joined in her latent mirth. "It makes life not worth living! But more than this, South Carolina looks down on the whole South."

"Not Virginia."

"Not? An 'entire stranger,' you know, sometimes notices things which escape the family eye--family likenesses in the children, for instance."

"Never Virginia," she persisted.

"Very well, very well! Somehow you've admitted the rest, however."

She began to smile.

"And next, Kings Port looks down on all the rest of South Carolina."

She now laughed outright. "An up-country girl will not deny that, anyhow!"

"And finally, your aunts--"

"My aunts are Kings Port."

"The whole of it?"

"If you mean the thirty thousand negroes--"

"No, there are other white people here--there goes your nose again!"

"I will not have you so impudent, sir!"

"A thousand pardons, I'm on my knees. But your aunts--" There was such a flash of war in her eye that I stopped.

"May I not even mention them?" I asked her.

And suddenly upon this she became serious and gentle. "I thought that you understood them. Would you take them from their seclusion, too? It is all they have left--since you burned the rest in 1865."

I had made her say what I wanted! That "you" was what I wanted. Now I should presently have it out with her. But, for the moment, I did not disclaim the "you." I said:--

"The burning in 1865 was horrible, but it was war."

"It was outrage."

"Yes, the same kind as England's, who burned Washington in 1812, and whom you all so deeply admire."

She had, it seemed, no answer to this. But we trembled on the verge of a real quarrel. It was in her voice when she said:--

"I think I interrupted you."

I pushed the risk one step nearer the verge, because of the words I wished finally to reach. "In 1812, when England burned our White House down, we did not sit in the ashes; we set about rebuilding."

And now she burst out. "That's not fair, that's perfectly inexcusable! Did England then set loose on us a pack of black savages and politicians to help us rebuild? Why, this very day I cannot walk on the other side of the river, I dare not venture off the New Bridge; and you who first beat us and then unleashed the blacks to riot in a new 'equality' that they were no more fit for than so many apes, you sat back at ease in your victory and your progress, having handed the vote to the negro as you might have handed a kerosene lamp to a child of three, and let us crushed, breathless people cope with the chaos and destruction that never came near you. Why, how can you dare--" Once again, admirably she pulled herself up as she had done when she spoke of the President. "I mustn't!" she declared, half whispering, and then more clearly and calmly, "I mustn't." And she shook her head as if shaking something off. "Nor must you," she finished, charmingly and quietly, with a smile.

"I will not," I assured her. She was truly noble.

"But I did think that you understood us," she said pensively.

"Miss La Heu, when you talked to me about the President and the White House, I said that you were hard to answer. Do you remember?"

"Perfectly. I said I was glad you found me so.'

"You helped me to understand you then, and now I want to be helped to further understanding. Last night I heard the 'Ode for the Daughters of Dixie.' I had a bad time listening to that."

"Do you presume to criticise it? Do we criticise your Grand Army reunions, and your 'Marching through Georgia,' and your 'John Brown's Body,' and your Arlington Museum? Can we not be allowed to celebrate our heroes and our glories and sing our songs?"

She had helped me already! Still, still, the something I was groping for, the something which had given me such pain during the ode, remained undissolved, remained unanalyzed between us; I still had to have it out with her, and the point was that it had to be with her, and not simply with myself alone. We must thrash out together the way to an understanding; an agreement was not in the least necessary--we could agree to differ, for that matter, with perfect cordiality--but an understanding we must reach. And as I was thinking this my light increased, and I saw clearly the ultimate thing which lay at the bottom of my own feeling, and which had been strangely confusing me all along. This discovery was the key to the whole remainder of my talk; I never let go of it. The first thing it opened for me was that Eliza La Heu didn't understand me, which was quite natural, since I had only just this moment become clear to myself.

"Many of us," I began, "who have watched the soiling touch of politics make dirty one clean thing after another, would not be wholly desolated to learn that the Grand Army of the Republic had gone to another world to sing its songs and draw its pensions."

She looked astonished, and then she laughed. Down in the South here she was too far away to feel the vile uses to which present politics had turned past heroism.

"But," I continued, "we haven't any Daughters of the Union banded together and handing it down."

"It?" she echoed. "Well, if the deeds of your heroes are not a sacred trust to you, don't invite us, please, to resemble you."

I waited for more, and a little more came.

"We consider Northerners foreigners, you know."

Again I felt that hurt which hearing the ode had given me, but I now knew how I was going to take it, and where we were presently coming out; and I knew she didn't mean quite all that--didn't mean it every day, at least--and that my speech had driven her to saying it.

"No, Miss La Heu; you don't consider Northerners, who understand you, to be foreigners."

"We have never met any of that sort."

("Yes," I thought, "but you really want to. Didn't you say you hoped I was one? Away down deep there's a cry of kinship in you; and that you don't hear it, and that we don't hear it, has been as much our fault as yours. I see that very well now, but I'm afraid to tell you so, yet.")