John solemnly smiled. "Why, she hasn't _been_ letting me. She never asked me to stay and she needn't ask me to go. I gave my word to _him_, and I shall keep it--to myself." His manner grew more playful. "That's what you'd do, wouldn't you, if you were a man?" But at that moment his hearer was not fancying herself a man; she was only wishing she were a younger woman. A gleam of the wish may have got into her look as she gave him her hand at parting, for somehow he began to have a sort of honey-sickness against femmine interests and plainly felt his land company's business crowding upon his conscience. LXIV. JUDICIOUS JOHANNA One thing that gives play for sentiment concerning a three hours' belated railway train is the unapologetic majesty with which at last it rolls into a terminal station. There had been rain-storms and freshets down in Dixie, and a subdued anxiety showed itself on Johanna's face as she stepped down from the crowded platform; but she shone with glad astonishment when she found John March taking her forgotten satchel from her hands and her checks from the express messenger. A great many people looked at them, once for curiosity and again for pleasure; for she was almost as flattering a representative of her class as he of his, and in meeting each other they seemed happy enough to have been twins. The hotel's conveyance was an old-fashioned stage-coach, but very new and blue. It made her dumb with delight to see the owner-like serenity with which Mr. March passed her into it and by and by out of it into the gorgeous hotel. But to double the dose of some drugs reverses their effect, and her supper, served in the ladies' ordinary and by a white man-servant, actually brought her to herself. As she began to eat--blissfully, for only a yard or so away sat Mr. March smilingly holding back a hundred inquiries--she managed, herself, to ask a question or two. She grew pensive when told of Miss Fannie's sickness and of the bridegroom's being compelled to go to Washington, but revived in reporting favorably upon the health of Mrs. March, whom, she said, she had seen at a fair given by both the Suez churches to raise money to repair the graveyard fence--"on account o' de hawgs breakin' in so awfm." "And you say everybody was there, eh?" indolently responded John, as he resharpened his lead-pencil. "Even including Professor Pettigrew?" "No, seh, I observe he not 'mongs' de comp'ny, 'caze yo' maw's Jane, she call my notice to dat." "I wonder how my mother likes Jane. Do you know?" Johanna showed a pretty embarrassment. "Jane say yo' maw like her. She say yo' maw like her 'caze she always done tole yo' maw ev'thing what happm when yo' maw not at home. Seh? Oh, no, seh," the speaker's bashfulness increased, "'tis on'y Jane say dat; same time she call my notice to de absence o' Pufesso' Pedigree--yass, seh."