The overseer’s daughter poured out tea behind a great silver urn, while on her right hand a monstrous cut-glass flagon foamed with richest milk. “Positively artistic,” thought Roden, feeling a certain respect in his British breast for this little maiden of Virginia who could evolve out of her own country-bred brain effects so charming. “It’s a beastly pity!” he told himself, though in what the pity consisted he could not quite have told any one else, unless perhaps that a being so gifted with a talent for instrumental music, and the setting forth of appetizing supper-tables, should be hemmed in from further progress by the scarlet soil of her native State, and should murder his sovereign’s language with ruthless regularity by beheading some words and cutting the remainder in two. He also pondered somewhat as to the way in which Virginian overseers and their children expected to be treated by resident foreigners. He noticed that the girl ate nothing herself, sitting with her hand in her lap after she had poured out his cup of tea, and pulling idly at the frayed edge of the table-cloth, with eyes downcast. He wished very much that he knew how to address her, and was casting about in his mind as to how he might find out her surname without being rude, when she answered him directly. “My name is Virginia”--she said “Faginia”--but it came softly to the ear--“Virginia Herrick.” “They ought to have called you ‘Julia,’ Miss Herrick,” said the young Englishman, gravely regarding her grave face. “Why?” she said, with her swift change from listless to alert--“why ought they? It’s a hijeous name, I think.” “It isn’t very pretty--not near so pretty as ‘Faginia,’” said Roden, gallantly; “but there was a fellow once called Herrick who was always writing songs to ‘Julia.’” “Oh,” said the girl, with a sudden dawning in her sombre eyes, “that’s the man wrote ‘To Daffodils’ and ‘Primroses’ and things, ain’t it?” “That’s the man,” he said. “Well,” she replied, slowly, “I don’t see why I ought to be called Julia. Her last name wa’n’t Herrick, ’cause he wouldn’t ’a’ written those kynder things to his sister, and a man wouldn’t ’a’ taken th’ trouble to write songs to’s wife.” “Why?” said Roden, fixing on her his eyes, at whose blueness she began to wonder in a vague way. Thus looking out from the young man’s sunburnt, weather-marked face they reminded her of some vivid, sky-colored flower springing into sudden azure among brown summer grasses. “Why?” he repeated. “Are all Virginian husbands so ungallant to their wives?” “So what?” she said, contracting her level brows. “So rude, so careless of their wives.” “Oh, I reckon so,” she made answer. “I don’t know much ’bout men ’n’ their wives. My father’s died when I was born, an’ somehow I don’t take much to women, nor they tuh me. But I know ’nuff,” she supplemented, “to know a man ain’t goin’ to make a fuss over ’s wife.”