“We're whipped,” he told her, “and that settles it. Now there's other work for us than brooding over it. All the same, the South has a future, Bibi, and that means a future for you and me.” “Not in the manufacture of poetry, I'm afraid,” she laughed. “You dropped a stitch.” She did not seem to take his prowess, either past or to come, very seriously; and her eyebrows and her inflection went up at the assumption of the “we” in his plans. But--she listened. His definiteness was itself effective. She herself did not know what she wanted. Something was wrong; or rather, everything was. She was finding life a great bore. But what would be right, she couldn't say, except that it must be different. Guy looked sure and seasoned as he poured out his plans; and together with the maturing tan and breadth from his rough life, there was an unconquerable boyishness in the lift of his head and the light of his eyes. “This enthusiasm is truly beautiful!” she teased. It was, in truth, infectious. Why! it was love she had wanted. The four years had been so empty--without Guy. She went into it alert, receptive, optimistic. But it nettled her that everybody should be so congratulatory, and nobody surprised. It wasn't what _she_ would call ideal for two impoverished young aristocrats to start life on nothing but affection and self-confidence. It did seem as if the choicest fruit always came to _her_ specked. “Never mind,” Guy encouraged her. “Just give me ten years. It will be a little hard on you at first, Bibi dear, I know, but it would be harder at your father's now. And it won't be long!” There was only one comment of whose intention Bessie was uncertain: “So Guy is to continue carrying you over the bad places, Bessie?” Hm! She had been thinking it rather a fine thing for _her_ to do. And that appealed to her. “And think what an amusing anecdote it will make after a while, Guy,--how, with all your worldly goods tied up in a red bandanna, and your wife on your arm instead of her father's doorstep, you set out to make your fortune, and to live meanwhile in the City of Un-Brotherly Love!” But Bessie had the standards of an open-handed people to whom economy was not a virtue. There had always been on her mother's table for every meal “salt-risin' light bread” and corn pone or griddle-cakes, half a dozen kinds of preserves, the staples in proportion. Her mother would have been humiliated had there been any noticeable diminution in the supply when the meal was over; and she and the cook would have had a council of war had a guest failed to eat and praise any single dish. Bessie had not realized how inglorious their meagreness would be, until Mrs. Grey, at the daughter's table, grew unctuously reminiscent about the mother's. “Dear me!” Guy tried afterward to comfort the red eyelids and tremulous lips, “do you want a table so full it takes your appetite at sight?” “I'm afraid I can't joke about disgrace!” Bessie quivered.