“I’ve--I’ve been a soldier since I saw you,” he said, with a boy’s mixture of pride and diffidence. “So I hear,” answered Olivia, with a pretty air of severity, “ran away from school, I believe.” “Yes,” said Miles, his diffidence disappearing before his pride. “I was big enough to carry a musket. Though I wasn’t but sixteen, I was taller than the captain of my company. Soldiering was fun until--until--.” He began to blush furiously, but kept on after a moment. “I didn’t mind sleeping in the mud, or anything. A man oughtn’t to mind that sort of thing, Olivia--if you’ll let me call you Olivia.” “Of course I will,” replied Olivia gayly. “Do you think I want to appear any older than I am?” Then she turned to Pembroke and said, “I was sorry not to have seen you the day you came to Isleham. We met last in Paris.” “I hope to see as much of Isleham as we did in the old days,” answered Pembroke. His voice was rather remarkable, it was so clear and well modulated. “I hope,” began Miles, stammering a little, “that--that you and the Colonel understood my not--why I didn’t come to see you in Paris.” “Not fully,” answered Olivia, pleasantly. “You must come over to Isleham and explain it--if you can. Have you seen papa yet?” “I see him now,” said Pembroke with a smile, “shaking hands with Mrs. Peyton.” Olivia smiled too. There had been a flirtation between Mrs. Peyton and Colonel Berkeley forty odd years before, and as everything that happened in the community was perfectly well known by everybody else, the episode had crystallized into a tradition. Colonel Berkeley had been known to swear that Sally Peyton in her youth was a jilt. Mrs. Peyton always said that Tom Berkeley was not to be depended on. The Colonel was saying to Mrs. Peyton in his grandest tones: “Madam, Time has passed you by.” “Ah, my dear Colonel,” responded Mrs. Peyton with a quizzical look at Colonel Berkeley’s elaborate toilet and flamboyant shirt ruffles, “we can’t cross the dead line of sixty without showing it. Even art cannot conceal it.” “Just like Sally Peyton’s sharp tongue,” the colonel growled sotto voce--while a suppressed guffaw from Pete on the verge of the group, showed the remark was not lost on that factotum. “And Petrarch too,” cried Mrs. Peyton in her fine, jovial old voice, holding out her hand. Pete shuffled up and took her hand in his black paw. “Howdy, Miss Sally. Lordy, marster done tole de truf--you looks jes ez young an’ chipper--How’s Mandy?” “Mandy has lost her senses since old Abe Lincoln made you all free. She’s left me and gone to Richmond to go to school--the old idiot.” “Hi! I allers did like Mandy, but I ain’t got no use fer dem niggers dat kin read ’n write. Readin’ an’ writin’ is fer white folks.” “Shut up, you black rascal,” roared the Colonel, nevertheless highly delighted. “Madam, may I present my daughter--Olivia, my child.”