Produced by Marcia Brooks, Al Haines, Alex White & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net MR. & MRS. SÊN By LOUISE JORDAN MILN Author of “Mr. Wu,” “The Feast of Lanterns,” “The Green Goddess,” etc. “The heyday of a great spirit knows no passing.” A. L. BURT COMPANY Publishers New York Published by arrangement with Frederick A. Stokes Company Printed in U. S. A. _Copyright, 1923, by_ Fredrick A. Stokes Company * * * * * _All rights reserved_ _Printed in the United States of America_ TO MALCOLM MURREE MILN FROM HIS MOTHER MR. AND MRS. SÊN CHAPTER I In this day of kaleidoscopic changes, of brand-new ultra “smartness,” of emancipations so tremendous, so upheaving, so incalculably far-reaching that to some they almost seem to forecast the end of all things, still there are old bulwarks of customs, of character, of individualities and of life itself that neither change nor are changed. The Townsends of Virginia are today just what they were long before 1776. There is only one of them left—Miss Julia—but she is they—the Townsends of Virginia; gracious, unapproachable, deft in a small, delicate way with her harpsichord, accomplished at her jellies, proud of her naperies, tyrannous and over-indulgent to her darkies, a fine judge of horseflesh, sure of herself, doubtful of you—unless your forebears of the same “first-families” caste as hers, had been born, had wived and begotten and borne, as hers invariably had, in Virginia—a stanch Episcopalian, refined to the _n_th degree, intolerant, sentimental—but too proud, and of too good form, to own or to show it—exclusive, generous—except of her acquaintance and in her opinions—a writer of feeble verses, brilliant along her own selected and approved lines, dull and ill-informed on all others, autocratic and secretly supersensitive, a _gourmet_ who ate very little, an expert judge of good wines who rarely drank them—buttermilk was her one creature weakness—charitable (although she was poorly enough off—had to count her dimes, and couldn’t count with even pretense at accuracy)—charitable to every “good work” she approved of or hungry creature that came to her back door, relentlessly uncharitable to any cause she did not sympathize with and to any “beggar” who presumed at her front door.