[Illustration: “I--I--I LOOK A AWFUL FOOL--DON’T I?”--_page 125._] VIRGINIA OF VIRGINIA A Story BY AMÉLIE RIVES AUTHOR OF “A BROTHER TO DRAGONS, AND OTHER OLD-TIME TALES” ETC. ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1888 Copyright, 1888, by HARPER & BROTHERS. _All rights reserved._ ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE “I--I--I LOOK A AWFUL FOOL--DON’T I?” _Frontispiece_ “I CAN’T COME TO DINNER” 11 “AW-W-W POPO!” 43 ON THE TOP OF PETER’S MOUNTAIN 65 “I GWINE TAKE DAT DAR OUTLANDISH THING OFFEN YO’, HONEY” 139 “HE MUST ’A’ HAD A MIGHTY LEETLE CROP” 161 VIRGINIA OF VIRGINIA. I. “It’s a girl,” said Roden, laying a wager with himself. “No; it’s a boy. Hanged if it isn’t a girl!” He took his short brier-wood pipe from his mouth, knocked out its contents against the side of the wagon, and pocketed it. The time of the year was January, the scene a country road in Virginia, and it was drizzling, a thick Scotch drizzle, abetted by a lusty east wind. Even the branches of the straggling locust-trees that lined the red road seemed clogged with it. It hung in folds upon the sides of the mountains, and was blown in masses between the clefts of the rolling meadows. Roden was not only a new arrival in Virginia, but in America, and the impression made upon him had not, to speak very moderately, been favorable. Coming from Washington, some one in the train had asked him if it did not remind him of England. He had answered with some curtness that it did not, demanding at the same time why he should be particularly reminded of England by the state of the weather in Virginia. His interlocutor had replied with the never-failing urbanity of the Virginian farmer, that “anybody could tell he was an Englisher by th’ way he talked, and them loose pants.” At the moment he first saw the figure alluded to, the owner of the British accent and the “loose pants” was shivering in spite of the top-coat turned up about his ears and the soft hat pulled down to meet it.