“Well, anyhow, it wasn’t Cousin Kirk’s fault. He didn’t have any revolver, either, when he first went out of the house; but another scholar he ran up and made him take one. Mother didn’t ever want him to go to that school, anyhow; several of our family had got shot there before by this other boy’s family. This other boy, you see, liked a young lady Cousin Kirk was attentive to; and he sent word in to him one day to come out of the school-house to see him. And the other young gen’lemen in the school, they warned Cousin Kirk not to see him, as he wasn’t armed. He’d never ought to have gone out unarmed. But he went. And as soon as they met he shot Cousin Bruce in the right arm. And a friend that was with him gave Cousin Bruce his pistol; and he had to fire; and he killed him; and Cousin Bruce always says that man’s face haunts him yet. And the mother of the young man was almost crazy; and afterward she called at the school with a revolver, dressed in deep mourning. And when Cousin Bruce came into the parlor he didn’t know who she was; and she shot at him through the crape veil. But, of course, she didn’t hit him. And Cousin Bruce always says that man’s face haunts him yet.” (I have endeavored to set down this conversation just as it happened. At the time I did not know at all what to make of Miss Jeanie Bruce. I had seen no girls like her in Salem, or even Boston. Her English was poor, her education deficient, her manners free. On all these points she was about on a par with the shop-girls in Lynn. But she was not at all like a Lynn shop-girl. Had I supposed it possible for there to be any ladies except according to the Salem and Boston standards, I should have set her down for a lady at the time.) Here we arrived at Decatur, where I had the pleasure of taking the two Misses Bruce in to dinner, in a hotel built alongside of the railroad track, as the principal street of the town. In the long dining-room were six transverse tables, over everyone of which was a huge wooden fan like the blade of a paddle. The six fans were connected together, and at the back of the room a small bare-footed negro swung the entire outfit to and fro by means of a long pole like a boat-hook; and with a great swish! swish! disturbed in regular oscillations the clouds of flies. Miss Jeanie took off the lace mitts at the dinner-table, and upon one forefinger of her pretty white hand I noticed a ring--a single band of gold setting a small ruby. When we got back into the cars and May had gone to sleep again, I reproached Jeanie with telling me she was not engaged. “I, too, was going to spend this winter at Knoxville, and I had hoped to see something of you.” “I am not engaged,” said Miss Jeanie. “The ring was given me by a gen’leman, but I do not care for him at all. I only promised to wear it a few weeks, because he bothered so. I’ll tell you what,” she said, “to show I don’t care for him and remind you to be sure and call, I’ll give it to you.”