“You what?” he bellowed. “What have you done?” (This was rhetorical now.) “The town’ll be overflowing with gold now, prices will be sky-high, diseased vegetables will sell for eighty-nine times the price they did and still be diseased, don’t kid yourself, there’ll be a glut, how the *** are we going to trade with any other community?”

In the bedroom he continued to grumble. “Blasted little Northerner, making a muck of everything.”

“Shut up!” I screamed, tasting the reckless joy of losing all caution. I added, “The Northerners are coming as allies of the Southerners, anyway.”

He laughed a little, making his torso waggle helplessly on top of him.

“Allies!” he said. “Allies that have to be damn careful of their manners in case we stop calling them the pretty name. Allies we can do anything with—didn’t we send back their messengers pickled in their own brine, and now they march on us in peace and not in war? Didn’t you notice how lily-livered your titchy little army was when it was here? Make no mistake, every Northern soldier hates every Southern soldier as much as every Southern soldier hates every Northern soldier. A lot of hate, eh? But there’ll be no war till we see which one of us gets Atlan! I have a hunch who it’ll be,” he said.

Incidentally, I should like to know why good deeds almost invarably go wrong.

It may be that when we just stay idle and go on in the same old selfish way the evil genius of the World leaves us alone because we are not troubling it. An act of positive good arouses the evil to fight and subdue and disencourage.

It could be, that if we were to continue doing the good—after all, why should we be put off? We have a perfect right to do good if we want to, haven’t we?—the evil would fall away behind us and be able no longer either to disencourage or to hinder.

The air is getting stickier. My experience of the plains has made me value water in every way, and I go daily to the fountain-room. The Southern fountain-room is a wonderful idea.

There are plain, white-tiled rooms—the richer ones are not tiles but marble—floor, walls, ceiling. In it is a ceaselessly-gushing fountain in a large circular basin set into the centre of the floor. That’s all.

It is the epitome of attractiveness and utter cleanliness. It combines the uses of latrine, bath, wash-basin, drinking-tap and interior decoration. It is lovely to run one hot and lie in it beneath the fountain’s motion.

0 my beloved Cousin, here I wish you were within me.

Here I need your self for mine.