King was looking down thoughtfully. "There is one trouble," he said, "in making a good appearance, and that comes from the ideas of some as to what sort of man or woman is the best. Before I left Seattle, Aunt Ann, my associates gave me a big dinner at the club—a sort of good-bye affair to drink to my future, you know—and some of the most distinguished men in the state were there, men prominent in the business and political world. And that night, Aunt Ann"—King had flushed slightly and his voice faltered—"that night a well-meaning man, a sort of society leader, in his toast to me plainly referred to me as a scion of the old Southern aristocracy, and he did it in just such a way as to make it appear to those who knew otherwise that I would be sailing under false colors if I did not correct the impression. He had made a beautiful talk about our old colonial homes, our slaves in livery, our beautiful women, who invariably graced the courts of Europe, and concluded by saying that it was no wonder I had succeeded where many other men with fewer hereditary influences to back them had failed." "Ah, you _were_ in a fix!" Ann said. "That is, it was awkward for you, who I know to be almost too sincere for your own good." "Well, I couldn’t let it pass, Aunt Ann—I simply couldn’t let all those men leave that table under a wrong impression. I hardly know what I said when I replied, but it seemed to be the right thing, for they all applauded me. I told him I did not belong to what was generally understood to be the old aristocracy of the South, but to what I considered the new. I told them about our log-cabin aristocracy, Aunt Ann, here in these blue mountains, for which my soul was famished. I told them of the sturdy, hard-working, half-starved mountaineers and their scratching, with dull tools, a bare existence out of this rocky soil. I told them of my bleak and barren boyhood, my heart-burnings at home, when my mother married again, the nights I’d spent at study in the light of pine-knots that filled the house with smoke. Then I told them about the grandest woman God ever brought to life. I told them about you, Aunt Ann. I gave no names, went into no painful particulars, but I talked about what you had done for me, and how you’ve been persecuted and misunderstood, till I could hardly hold back the tears from my eyes." "Oh, hush, Luke," Ann said, huskily—"hush up!" "Well, I may now, but I couldn’t that night," said King. "I got started, and it came out of me like a flood. I said things about you that night that I’ve thought for years, but which you never would let me say to you." "Hush, Luke, hush—you are a good boy, but you mustn’t—" Ann’s voice broke, and she placed her hand to her eyes.