“And you, who are laughing in your sleeves at the scene, where did you get that huge bunch?” “Oh, there is no sentiment when there is a pile like that of anything!” “Oh, oh!” To-day at the breakfast table there was a tragic bestowal of heartsease on the well-known inquirer who, once more says in austere tones: “Who is the flirt now?” And so we fool on into the black cloud ahead of us. And after heartsease cometh rue. _April 4th._—Mr. Hayne said his wife moaned over the hardness of the chaperones’ seats at St. Andrew’s Hall at a Cecilia Ball.[29] She was hopelessly deposited on one for hours. “And the walls are harder, my dear. What are your feelings to those of the poor old fellows leaning there, with their beautiful young wives waltzing as if they could never tire and in the arms of every man in the room. Watch their haggard, weary faces, the old boys, you know. At church I had to move my pew. The lovely Laura was too much for my boys. They all made eyes at her, and nudged each other and quarreled so, for she gave them glance for glance. Wink, blink, and snicker as they would, she liked it. I say, my dear, the old husbands have not exactly a bed of roses; their wives twirling in the arms of young men, they hugging the wall.” While we were at supper at the Haynes’s, Wigfall was sent for to address a crowd before the Mills House piazza. Like James Fitz James when he visits Glen Alpin again, it is to be in the saddle, etc. So let Washington beware. We were sad that we could not hear the speaking. But the supper was a consolation—_pâté de foie gras_ salad, _biscuit glacé_ and _champagne frappé_. A ship was fired into yesterday, and went back to sea. Is that the first shot? How can one settle down to anything; one’s heart is in one’s mouth all the time. Any moment the cannon may open on us, the fleet come in. _April 6th._—The plot thickens, the air is red hot with rumors; the mystery is to find out where these utterly groundless tales originate. In spite of all, Tom Huger came for us and we went on the Planter to take a look at Morris Island and its present inhabitants—Mrs. Wigfall and the Cheves girls, Maxcy Gregg and Colonel Whiting, also John Rutledge, of the Navy, Dan Hamilton, and William Haskell. John Rutledge was a figurehead to be proud of. He did not speak to us. But he stood with a Scotch shawl draped about him, as handsome and stately a creature as ever Queen Elizabeth loved to look upon. There came up such a wind we could not land. I was not too sorry, though it blew so hard (I am never seasick). Colonel Whiting explained everything about the forts, what they lacked, etc., in the most interesting way, and Maxcy Gregg supplemented his report by stating all the deficiencies and shortcomings by land.