“Everybody” was not hard to get together. Counting out Tullius and Jim, there were only Aunt Ailsey and Mahalah, old Peggy, Martha and young Martha, William and Mat and Rose’s Husband. They were already out of cabin and kitchen and in from the home fields. Miriam gathered them on the side porch. They all adored her and she handled them with genius. Her thin cheeks had in each a splash of carmine, her eyes were unearthly large, dark and liquid. All that she said to them was that it was good manners to do so and so—or not to do so and so—in a contingency like the present. Ladies and gentlemen keep very quiet and dignified—and we are ladies and gentlemen—and that is all there is about it. “And here is the wagon, and now we’ll see Captain Yeardley off, and wish him a good journey, and then _we’ll forget that he has ever been here_. That’s manners that every one of us must show!” Tullius and Jim brought the wounded officer downstairs on his mattress and laid him in the wagon. Old Patsy followed to nurse him, and they placed beside him, too, his uniform and hat and sword. He was flushed with fever and light-headed. “This is no way to do it!” he insisted. “Inconsiderate brutes to take advantage!—Ladies, too! Must stay and protect.—Lovely day for a drive! See the country at its best!—New fashion, driving lying down! driving in bed!—Time for new fashions, had old fashions long enough!—Bring the ladies home something pretty—scarf or feather!—saw a man once show the white feather—it wasn’t pretty.—Pretty, pretty— ‘_Pretty Polly Watkins_—,’” Jim drove him away, trying to sing. It was not far to where the farm road dipped into a heavy woodland. The rumble of the wagon died from the air. Mother and daughter turned and looked at each other. Margaret spoke. “The hair trunk with Will’s things in it, and the portraits and silver and your great-grandfather’s books and letters—we might hide them in the hollow behind the ice-house. No one can see it for the honeysuckle.” “Very well. I’ll get the books and papers.”