"Quite enervating, indeed! I seem only now to be feeling its effects." As he walked briskly down the now cooling street, he bared his brow to the gentle breeze of evening. To the ladies, solicitous about Miss Caroline, who called upon him a few days later, he said, "She is a most admirable and lovely woman--not at all a person one could bring one's self to address on the painful subject of intoxicants. Had she offered me a glass of wine or other stimulant, a way might have been opened, but I am delighted to say that her hospitality went no farther than this innocent beverage." The minister indicated on his study table a glass containing sweetened ice-water in which some leaves of mint had been submerged. "It is called a mint julep," he added, "though I confess I do not get the same delicate tang from the herb that her black fellow does. As he prepared the decoction I assure you its flavor was capital!" CHAPTER XVII THE TRUTH ABOUT SHAKSPERE AT LAST Miss Caroline dutifully returned the calls that were paid her, with never a suspicion that her slavery to strong drink had been the secret inspiration of them. She was not yet awake to our sentiments in this matter. She had given strong waters to the minister with a heart as innocent as their disguise of ice and leafage had made them actually appear to that good man. And I, who was well informed, hesitated to warn her, hoping weakly that she would come to understand. For I had seen there were many things that Miss Caroline had not to be told in order to know. For one, she had quickly divined that the ladies of Little Arcady considered her furniture to be unfortunate. She knew that they scorned it for its unstylishness; that some of them sympathized in the humiliation that such impossible stuff must be to her; while others believed that she was too unsophisticated to have any proper shame in the matter. These latter strove by every device to have her note the right thing in furniture and thus be moved to contrast it instructively with her own: as when Mrs. Judge Robinson borrowed for an afternoon Aunt Delia McCormick's best blue plush rocker, Mrs. Westley Keyts's new sofa, upholstered with gorgeous ingrain, and Mrs. Eubanks's new black walnut combination desk and bookcase with brass trimmings and little spindled balconies, in which could be elegantly placed the mineral specimens picked up along the river bank, and the twin statuettes of the fluting shepherd and his inamorata. As Mrs. Judge Robinson herself possessed new and high-priced furniture, including a gold-and-onyx stand to occupy the bay window and uphold the Rogers group, "Going for the Parson," as well as two fragile gilt chairs, which considerate guests would not sit in but leave exposed to view, and a complete new set of black walnut, the effect that day--which included a grand smell of varnish--was nothing less than sumptuous.