"Of course, I can't say for certain," he went on, lighting a cigarette. "I only judge by the way they go on when they're together, and the way he talks of her. Say, do you ever want to grow old?" "No, I don't--ever." "Neither do I. I hope I'll be kicked to death by a horse, or drowned or shot before I'm forty. I don't want to die in any beds with doctors round me. I reckon if I'm ever like that I'll drink the liniment instead of the medicine--same as I nearly drenched Pap--and go to heaven with a red label for my ticket. Sit down for a while and let's talk." "No, I don't care to sit down." "I won't touch you. I promise." Phyl hesitated a moment and then sat down. She was not afraid of Silas in the least, but his tricks of an overgrown boy did not please her; it seemed to her sometimes as though his irresponsibility was less an inheritance from youth, than from some ancestor ill-balanced to the point of craziness. If any other man of his age had acted and spoken to her as he had done she would have smacked his face, but Silas was Silas, and his good looks and seeming innocence, and something really charming that lay away at the back of his character and gave colour to this personality, managed, somehow, to condone his queerness of conduct. All the same she sat a foot away from him on the seat, and kept her hands folded on her lap. Silas sat for a while smoking in silence, then he spoke. "Where's this you said you came from?" "Ireland." "You don't talk like a Paddy a bit." "Don't I?" "Not a bit, nor look like one." "Have you seen many Irish people?" "No, mostly in pictures--comic papers, you know, like _Puck_." "I think it's a shame," broke out Phyl. "People are always making fun of the Irish, drawing them like monkeys with great upper lips--but it's only ignorant people who never travel who think of them like that." "That's so, I expect," replied Silas, either unconscious of the dig at himself or undesirous of a quarrel, "and the next few dollars I have to spare I'll go to Ireland. I'm crazy now to see it." "What's made you crazy to see it?" "Because it's the place you come from." Phyl sniffed. "I hate compliments." "I wasn't complimenting you, I was complimenting Ireland," said Silas sweetly. She was silent, a white moth passing close to her held her gaze for a moment, then it flitted away across the bushes. "Let's forget Ireland for a moment," said she, "and talk of Charleston. Do you know many people there?" "I know most every one. The Pinckneys and Calhouns and Tredegars and Revenalls and--" "Rhetts." "Yes--but there are a dozen Rhetts; same as there's half a hundred Pinckneys and Calhouns, families, I mean. What's his name--Richard Pinckney, your guardian, is engaged to a Rhett." "He is not." "He is--Venetia Frances, the one that lives in Legare Street. Why, I've seen them canoodling often, and every one says they are engaged." "Well, he's not, or Miss Pinckney would have told me."