Andrew the Glad

"I do think so," she answered with a low laugh as she arose to her feet,

drew Caroline up into the bend of her arm and faced Mrs. Buchanan and the

major. "I know the loveliness in the statue is what the great man got out

of the loveliness in your heart, and the major and Mrs. Matilda think so,

too. And I'm going quick because I must; and I'm coming back as soon as I

can because I'm going to find you here--that is _partly_, Major," and

before they could stop her she had gone on down the hall and they heard

her answer Jeff's farewell as he let her out the door.

"That, Caroline Darrah Brown, was your first and most important

conquest," observed the major. "Phoebe has a white rock heart but a

crystal cracked therefrom is apt to turn into a jewel of price. Hers

is a blood-ruby friendship that pays for the wearing and cherishing. But

it's time for the nap Mrs. Matilda decides for me to take and I must

leave you ladies to your dimity talk." With which he betook himself to

his room, still plainly pleased at the result of Phoebe's call on the

stranger.

The two women thus left to their own devices spent a delightful half-hour

wandering over the house and discussing its furnishings and arrangements.

Mrs. Buchanan never tired of the delights of her town home. The house was

very stately and old-world, with its treasures of rare ancestral rosewood

and mahogany that she had brought in from the Seven Oaks Plantation. The

rooms in the country home had been so crowded with treasures of bygone

generations that they were scarcely dismantled by the furnishing of

the town house.

She was in her glory of domesticity, and as she passed from one room to

another she told Caroline bits of interesting history about this piece or

that. In her naiveté she let the girl see into the long hard years that

had been a hand-to-hand struggle for her and the major on their worn

farm lands out in the beautiful Harpeth Valley.

The cropping out of phosphate on the bare fields had brought a

comfortable fortune in its train to the old soldier farmer and they had

moved into this town house to spend the winter in greater accessibility

to their friends. Her own particular little world had welcomed her with

delight, and Caroline could see that she was taking a second bellehood as

if it had been an uninterrupted reign.

Most of the financiers of the city were the major's old friends and they

managed enormously advantageous contracts with mining companies for him,

and had taken him into the schemes of the mighty with the most manifest

cordiality.

His study became the scene of much important plot and counter-plot. They

found in his mind the quality which had led them to outwit many an enemy

when he scouted ahead of their tattered regiment, still available when

the enemy appeared under commercial or civic front. Also it naturally

happened that his library gradually became the hunting-grounds for Mrs.

Matilda's young people, who were irresistibly drawn into the circle of

his ever ready sympathy.