Also there were the more subtle perils of the pantry and the green-apple orchard. I did not see any accident during my brief stay at the place, but I saw the dietetic ferocities of the family and marveled at them. It seemed to me that the life of that most precious of infants, Castleman Lysle, was one endless succession of adventures with mustard and ipecac and castor oil. I want somehow to make you realize this world of Sylvia’s, and I don’t know how I can do it better than by telling of my first vision of that future heir of all the might, majesty and dominion of the Lysles. It was one of the rare occasions when the Major was taking him on a journey. The old family horses were hitched to the old family carriage, and with a negro on the box, another walking at the horses’ heads, a third riding on a mule behind, and a fourth sent ahead to notify the police, the procession set forth to the station. I know quite well that I shall be called a liar; yet I can only give my solemn word that I saw it with my own eyes—the chief of police, duly notified, had informed all the officers on duty, and the population of a bustling town of forty thousand inhabitants, in the United States of America in the twentieth century, were politely requested not to drive automobiles along the principal avenue during the half hour that it took to convey Master Lysle to the train! And of course such a “request” was a command to all the inhabitants who were genteel enough to own automobiles. Was not this the grandson of the late General Castleman, the grand-nephew of a former territorial governor? Was he not the heir of the largest, the oldest and the most famous plantation in the county, the future dispenser of favors and arbiter of social fates? Was he not, incidentally, the brother of the loveliest girl in the state, to whom most of the automobile owners in the town had made violent love? I would like to tell more about that world and Sylvia’s experiences in it—some of those amazing tales! Of the negro boy who bit a piece out of the baby’s leg, because he had heard someone say that the baby looked sweet enough to eat; of the negro girl who heard a war-story about “a train of gun-powder,” and proceeded with Sylvia’s aid to lay such a train from the cellar to the attic of the house. I would like to tell the whole story of her girlhood, and the strange ideas they taught her; but I have to pick and choose, saving my space for the things that are necessary to the understanding of her character.