But though aloof she was not alien. As befitted her name and station, she could in time of need descend from her remote Olympus above the insecticidal Mr. Boggs and lend a hand. The first occasion was when a sudden and disastrous spring epidemic of that Herod of diseases, diphtheria, swept down upon Our Square, bringing panic in its train, an insane and bestial panic which barred doors against the authorities, against help, against medicine, against even our fiery and beloved Little Red Doctor, who stands like a bulwark between us and death and the fear of death. Then the Duchess appeared. She consulted briefly with the Little Red Doctor. She put on the black silk of splendor, the Pinckney laces and the Pemberton diamonds, and thus girded for the fray went forth, a spare, thin-lipped, female St. George, against our local dragon. Wherever that sane and confident presence appeared, panic gave way to reason and mutiny to obedience. There were no heroics. She nursed no dying children, saved no sudden emergency. She simply restored and enforced courage through the authority of a valiant and assured personality. Just before the Little Red Doctor collapsed, at the close of the crisis, he delivered his estimate of her. “Cold nerve and tradition. Our Square ought to put up a statue to her--in steel.” Against which may be set off the Duchess's complacent and bland summing up of the Little Red Doctor:-- “He seems a worthy young man.” In retort, Mr. Boggs, for once forgetting his reverential attitude, indignantly piped: “God give you understanding!” The Duchess merely lifted her eyebrows fractionally. Being a Pemberton by birth and a Tallafferr by name, she perceived no necessity of understanding lesser forms of life.