A virgin martyr refusing to sacrifice a dove to Venus might have uttered her costly heresy in such a voice and with such a look; but the General met it suavely with a flourish of his wide-brimmed hat and a blandishing smile. He was one of those gentlemen of the old school, I came to know later, to whom it was an inherent impossibility to appear without affectation in the presence of a member of the opposite sex. A high liver, and a good fellow every inch of him, he could be natural, racy, charming, and without vanity, when in the midst of men; but let so much as the rustle of a petticoat sound on the pavement, and he would begin to strut and plume himself as instinctively as the cock in the barnyard. "But what would you do with a vote, my dear Miss Matoaca," he protested airily. "Put it into a pie?" His witticism, which he hardly seemed aware of until it was uttered, afforded him the next instant an enjoyment so hilarious that I saw his waist shake like a bowl of jelly between the flapping folds of his alpaca coat. While he stood there with his large white cravat twisted awry by the swelling of his crimson neck, and his legs, in a pair of duck trousers, planted very far apart on the sidewalk, he presented the aspect of a man who felt himself to be a graduate in the experimental science of what he probably would have called "the sex." When I heard him frequently alluded to afterwards as "a gay old bird," I wondered that I had not fitted the phrase to him as he fixed his swimming, parrot-like eyes on the flushed face of Miss Matoaca. "If that's all the use you'd make of it, I think we might safely trust it to you," he observed with a flattering glance. "A woman who can make your mince pies, dear lady, need not worry about her rights." "How is George, General?" asked Miss Matoaca, with an air of gentle, offended dignity. "I heard he had come to live with you since his mother's death." "So he has, the rascal," responded the General, "and a nephew under twelve years of age is a severe strain on the habits of an elderly bachelor." The corners of Miss Matoaca's mouth grew suddenly prim. "I suppose you could hardly close the door on your sister's orphan son," she observed, in a severer tone than I had yet heard her use. He sighed, and the sigh appeared to pass in the form of a tremor through his white-trousered legs. "Ah, that's it," he rejoined. "You ladies ought to be thankful that you haven't our responsibilities. No, no, thank you, I won't come in. My respects to Miss Mitty and to yourself." The gate closed softly as if after a love tryst, Miss Matoaca disappeared into the garden, and the General's expression changed from its jocose and smiling flattery to a look of genuine annoyance. "No, I don't want a paper, boy!" he exclaimed.