"You must have read it wrong, Mr. Ardmore. In North Carolina, in the absence of the governor, I am governor! Don't look so shocked; when I say I, I mean I--_me!_ Do you understand what I said?" "I heard what you said, Miss Dangerfield." "I mean what I said, Mr. Ardmore. I have taken you into my confidence because I don't know you. I don't know anything about you. I don't want to know anything about you. I'd be ashamed to ask anybody I know to help me. The people of North Carolina must never know that the governor is absent during times of great public peril. And if _you_ are afraid, Mr. Ardmore, you had better not accept the position." "There's nothing I wouldn't do for you," blurted Ardmore. "I'm not asking you--I _would_ not ask you--to do anything for me. I am asking you to do it for the Old North State. Our relations, Mr. Ardmore, will not be social, but purely official. Do you accept the terms?" "I do; and I warn you now that I shall never resign." "I have heard papa say that life is short and the tenure of office uncertain. I can remove you at any time I please. Now do you understand that this is a serious business? There's likely to be a lot of trouble, and no time for asking questions, so when I say it's so it's so." "It's so," repeated Ardmore docilely. "Now, here's the sheriff at Kildare, on our side of the line, who writes to say that he is powerless to catch Appleweight. He's afraid of the dark, that man! You see, the grand jury in Dilwell County--that's Kildare, you know--has indicted Appleweight as a common outlaw, but the grand jurors were all friends of Appleweight and the indictment was only to satisfy law-and-order sentiment and appease the Woman's Civic League of Raleigh. Now, papa doesn't--I mean _I_ don't want to offend those Appleweight people by meddling in this business. Papa wants Governor Osborne to arrest Appleweight in South Carolina; but I don't believe Governor Osborne will dare do anything about it. Now, Mr. Ardmore, I am not going to have papa called a coward by anybody, particularly by South Carolina people, after what Governor Osborne said of our state." "Why, what did he say?" "He said in a speech at Charleston last winter that no people who fry their meat can ever amount to anything, and he meant us! I can never forgive him for that; besides, his daughter is the stuck-upest thing! And I'd like Barbara Osborne to tell me how _she_ got into the Colonial Dames, and what call _she_ has to be inspector-general of the Granddaughters of the Mexican War; for I've heard my grandfather Dangerfield say many a time that old Colonel Osborne and his South Carolina regiment never did go outside of Charleston until the war was over and the American army had come back home."