“That is certainly very kind of them, Aunt Polly. I can’t imagine anything more generous in the mind than that. But--well, never mind.” “What were you going to say, Arthur?” “Oh, nothing of any consequence. I was only thinking that perhaps my Virginia neighbors do not lay so much stress upon these things as you do.” “Of course not. That is one of the troubles of this time. Since we let the Yankees build railroads through Virginia, everybody here wants to travel. Why, half the gentlemen in this county have been to New York!” “How very shocking!” said Arthur, hiding his smile behind his hand. “That’s really what made the trouble for poor Dorothy,” mused Aunt Polly. “If her father hadn’t gone gadding about--he even went to Europe you know--Dorothy never would have been born.” “How fortunate that would have been! But tell me about it, Aunt Polly. You see I don’t quite understand in what way it would have been better for Dorothy not to have been born--unless we accept the pessimist philosophy, and consider all human life a curse.” “Now you know, I don’t understand that sort of talk, Arthur,” answered Aunt Polly. “I never studied philosophy or chemistry, and I’m glad of it. But I know it would have been better for Dorothy if Dr. South had stayed at home like a reasonable man, and married--but there, I mustn’t talk of that. Dorothy is a dear girl, and I’m fitting her for her position in life as well as I can. If I could stop her from thinking, now, or--” “Pray don’t, Aunt Polly! Her thinking interests me more than anything I ever studied,--except perhaps the strange and even inexplicable therapeutic effect of champagne in yellow fever--” “There you go again, with your outlandish words, which you know I don’t understand or want to understand, though sometimes I remember them.” “Tell me of an instance, Aunt Polly.” “Why, you said to me the other night that Dorothy was a ‘psychological enigma’ to your mind, and that you very much wished you might know ‘the conditions of heredity and environment’ that had produced ‘so strange a phenomenon.’ There! I remember your words, though I haven’t the slightest notion what they mean. I went upstairs and wrote them down. Of course I couldn’t spell them except in my own way--and that would make you laugh I reckon if you could see it, which you never shall--but I haven’t a glimmering notion of what the words mean. Now I want to tell you about Dorothy.” “Good! I am anxious to hear!” “Oh, I’m not going to tell you what you want to hear. That would be gossip, and no Virginia woman ever gossips.”