"Bob, among ourselves, do you really think Jefferson Davis was a greater man than Abraham Lincoln?"

"Ssssh!" said Jonstone.

"Do you really think the Southern armies wiped up the map with the Northern armies every time they met? And do you really think that wooden-faced doll that Sully painted has no equal for beauty north of the Mason and Dixon line? What you need is travel and experience."

"What's the matter with you getting married?—My God, don't spill that, Mel!"

"There's nothing the matter with it. And I'll tell you what I'll do: I will if you will."

"They ought to be sisters, seeing as how you and I have always been like brothers and voted the Democratic ticket and fought chickens."

"And fed the same ticks and mosquitoes."

"We'll have a double wedding. We'll each be the other's best man, and they'll each be the other's best girl."

"No—no; they are each to be our best girls."

"What I mean is—"

"I know what you mean, but you've made this julep too strong."

"That's one thing they can't do in the North."

"What's that?"

"Make a julep."

Meredith considered this at some length. "No, Bob," he said at length, "they can't. But I once met a statesman from Maine who made a thing that looked like a julep, tasted like a julep, and that—I'd say it if it was my dying statement—had the same effect."

"She must be better-looking than Great-grandmother Pringle," said Jonstone. "She must be able to make a julep, and she must have a sister just like her. Can you lend me a suit of clothes till we get to New York?"

"I can lend you anything from a yachting suit to a Bulgarian uniform."

"And you're sure I'm not imposing on you in the matter of the silver?"

"Sure. I just want to know it's mine."

In the morning, soon after this precious pair had breakfasted, a boy went through the train with newspapers and magazines. He proclaimed in the sweetest Virginian voice that his magazines were just out, but a copy of The Four Seasons which Colonel Meredith bought proved not only to be of an ancient date but to have had coffee spilled upon it.

At the moment when this discovery was made, the youthful paper-monger had just swung from the crawling train to the platform of a way station, so there was no redress. The cousins agreed, laughing, that if a Yankee had played them such a trick they would have wished to cut his heart out, but that, turned upon them by a fellow countryman, it was merely a proof of smartness and push.

"Between you and me, Bob," said Colonel Meredith, "an accurate count of our Southern population would proclaim a villain or two here and there. I was brought up to believe that to be born in a certain region was all that was necessary. But that's not so. I tell you this because I am afraid that when you are meeting people in New York and having a good time you will be wanting to lay down the law, to wit, that one Southerner can whip five Yankees. Don't do it. I will tell you a horrid truth. I was once whipped by a small-sized Frenchman within an inch of my life. He had studied le boxe under Carpentier and I hadn't. Did you ever study le boxe? No? An Anglo-Saxon imagines that he was born boxing. And it takes a licking by a man of Latin blood to prove to him that he wasn't. Just because people make funny noises and monkey cries when they fight doesn't prove that they are afraid. There is nothing so ridiculous as a baboon going into action and nothing more terrible when he gets there."