"Yes, I've always understood these Southern women don't do much but eat candy and fix themselves up. Anyway, she's very striking-looking, much more so than the daughter. She's a very tall girl, I noticed her eyes were almost on a level with mine--big black eyes and she kind of rolls 'em around, you know----" "What did they have on, Gwynne?" He paused; he meditated. "They were all dressed up," he said at last, with the air of one conveying a piece of valuable information, the result of close and prolonged study. Again he meditated. "Well, they were both all dressed up, you know. What's that thing you've got on, that tight jacket thing--or is it a--a waist? Hers was red, with little curlycues all over it." "You mean it was braided?" "Yes, that's it, braided--they were both all dressed up, you know. Well, then Templeton introduced us, told the colonel who I was, that is, and he welcomed me as if I had been his long-lost brother with the strawberry-mark. Called me 'my dear boy' right off--I don't much care about that sort of thing," said Gwynne, shrugging. "But I suppose it's his way. Everybody was very cordial, and there was so much hands-all-round and hurrah-boys, you never would have thought we'd just met for the first time. It's not the way we're used to up here, but on the whole, doctor, it's rather nice--they're very interesting people, and they've got such pleasant Southern voices, and they're gay, somehow, gay and kind," said Gwynne, who, poor young fellow, had had little enough either of gaiety or kindness in his experience of life. "The colonel presented me to the ladies with the grandest flourish you ever saw, and said he understood this was my ancestral home, and he knew just how I felt at seeing strangers in it, but I mustn't cease to look upon it as my home just the same, and that he hoped I would come there whenever I felt like it; and he didn't know how _I_ thought about it, but for _his_ part, it seemed to him there was nothing like having a gentleman for a tenant and a gentleman for a landlord. Right there," said Gwynne, with a grin, "I might have sprung it on him that he was going to have quite a few gentlemen and some ladies for a landlord, but I only said, 'The house belongs to an estate, you know,' and something about our being so fortunate to have them in it--I _had_ to say something after all their cordiality. And he went right on, without paying much attention, 'Ah, indeed?' he thought it quite possible he might buy it, he wanted to settle down somewhere, he was tired of travelling about, and he had got his business in such shape that he _could_ settle down at last." "What is his business, Gwynne?" interrupted the doctor suddenly.