"Do you notice," replied he, "that the spring here is away behind ours?" "Yes, sir. By night, I suppose, we'll be where it's hardly spring at all yet." "We'll be out of Dixie," said John, looking far away. "Now, Mr. March," responded Barbara, with a smile of sweetest resentment, "you're ag-grav-a-ting my nos-tal-gia!" To the younger commercial traveler her accents sounded like the wavelets on a beach! "Why, I declare, Miss Garnet, I don't want to do that. If you'll help me cure mine I'll do all you'll let me do to cure yours." Barbara was pensive. "I think mine must be worse than yours; I don't want it cu-ured." "Well, I didn't mean cured, either; I only meant solaced." "But, Mr. March, I--why, my home-sickness is for all Dixie. I always knew I loved it, but I never knew how much till now." "Miss Garnet!" softly exclaimed John with such a serious brightness of pure fellowship that Barbara dropped her gaze to her book. "Isn't it right?" she asked, playfully. "Right? If it isn't then I'm wrong from centre to circumference!" "Why, I'm glad it's so com-pre-hen-sive-ly cor-rect." The commercial traveler hid his smile. "It's about all I learned at Montrose," she continued. "But, Mr. March, what is it in the South we Southerners love so? Mr. Fair asked me this morning and when I couldn't explain he laughed. Of course I didn't confess my hu-mil-i-a-tion; I intimated that it was simply something a North-ern-er can't un-der-stand. Wasn't that right?" "Certainly! They _can't_ understand it! They seem to think the South we love is a certain region and everything and everybody within its borders." "I have a mighty dim idea where its Northern border is sit-u-a-ted." "Why, so we all have! Our South isn't a matter of boundaries, or skies, or landscapes. Don't you and I find it all here now, simply because we've both got the true feeling--the one heart-beat for it?" Barbara's only answer was a stronger heart-beat. "It's not," resumed March, "a South of climate, like a Yankee's Florida. It's a certain ungeographical South-within-the-South--as portable and intangible as--as----" "As our souls in our bodies," interposed Barbara. "You've said it exactly! It's a sort o' something--social, civil, political, economic----" "Romantic?" "Yes, romantic! Something that makes----" "'No land like Dixie in all the wide world over!'" "Good!" cried John. "Good! O, my mother's expressed that beautifully in a lyric of hers where she says though every endearing charm should fade away like a fairy gift our love would still entwine itself around the dear ruin--verdantly--I oughtn't to try to quote it. Doesn't her style remind you of some of the British poets? Aha! I knew you'd say so! Your father's noticed it. He says she ought to study Moore!" Barbara looked startled, colored, and then was impassive again, all in an instant and so prettily, that John gave her his heartiest admiration even while chafed with new doubts of Garnet's genuineness.