"He's been too much chased. He's got his fingers crossed on them, they tell me. Just watch him in action at his dinner. He side-steps so gently that they never know it." "Why is it then that he gives to me this dinner of honor when he so dislikes all--that is, I mean to ask of you why is it that I am so honored by that very great Gouverneur Faulkner of the State of Harpeth?" I asked, and I had a great fright that I had again so nearly betrayed Robert Carruthers to be one of the sex so hated by that noble gentleman, the Gouverneur Faulkner. "I must think of myself as a man in future," I commanded myself. "Didn't the General tell you about it? It is to introduce you to the flower and chivalry of your native land. Believe me, it will be some dinner dance. The General wanted it to be a stag, but Sue fought to the last trench, which was tears, and he gave in. These days the Governor loses no chance to honor his Secretary of State for--for political reasons," and as he spoke that good Mr. Clendenning looked at the wheel for steering, and I could see that there was deep concern in his eyes. "Is it that--that trouble of mules, Monsieur Clendenning?" I asked of him softly in a woman's way for administering sympathy for distress but without the masculine discretion that I was to learn swiftly thereafter to employ. "Don't talk about it, for I don't know how much either of us knows or our chief wants us to know, but Governor Williamson Faulkner is a man of honor and I'd stake my life on that. He's being pushed hard and--Gee! Here we are at the General's and I can smell Kizzie's cream gravy with my mind's nose. I understand that your father was the last Henry Carruthers of five born up in the old mahogany bedstead that the General inhabits between the hours of one and five A.M. Some shack, this of the General's, isn't it? Nothing finer in the State." And as he spoke that Mr. Buzz Clendenning stopped the car before the home of my Uncle, the General Robert, and we alighted from it together.