All this is by way of calling attention to the really remarkable fact that Mrs. Pallinder employed none of the tactics just recited; classes in bridge and Current Events were unknown in her day, and she went to church neither more nor less than other people. She succeeded, I make bold to say, as no one ever has before or since. And this, in spite of the rather unfavourable impression which she and her daughter had made at the start. I, for one, did not much fancy Gwynne's description of Miss Pallinder--her name was Mazie--ogling and making fun with a man like Templeton; I thought her behaviour distinctly _common_. And that business of taking Gwynne behind the house for a drink of whiskey--out of the _bottle_, at that!--which does not shock me at all now, was anathema in my eyes then. These opinions were shared by everybody who heard the circumstances; what made us change our minds? That is the mystery. I think now that the Pallinders won upon us by that very frank gaiety and kindliness that had so touched and attracted Gwynne; nothing else can account for their popularity. Of course at the end of their stay everyone simultaneously discovered a number of disagreeable things; the usual wiseacres went about uttering the usual wisdom of "I-told-you-so." Colonel Pallinder had always been a man to distrust; Mrs. Pallinder and her daughter undeniably painted and were too lively in their manners; there was more poker and mint-julep going freely behind the Parthenon portals than one ever saw in the best houses; and Mrs. Botlisch was perfectly intolerable. To be just, however, no one had ever pretended to think Mrs. Botlisch other than intolerable; some people even went so far as to say that it was greatly to the Pallinders' credit that they did not shake off that terrific social drawback altogether. The colonel was a big man, with thick flowing grey hair under a wide-brimmed soft hat; he wore his clothing with a slashing military picturesqueness--d'Artagnan in a long-skirted black broadcloth coat; and limped a little from a bullet in the thigh at Missionary Ridge. He had a handsome office downtown, and was always enthusiastically busy over the syndicate's affairs; maps of railroads, of iron, salt, coal and "phosphate" territory in Arkansas and elsewhere adorned his walls; circulars and prospectuses gushed forth from his place of business as from a living fountain. Who went up and drank at that sempiternally flowing spring--who, in plain language, invested with Colonel Pallinder? Nobody knew; but it was easy to see that investment with him paid; the Pallinders lived in the spacious ease of an unlimited income.