"What!" he said, in his genuine "quality" voice, as if this had touched the climax of the improbabilities.
Shattuck marked the vibrations of pride and surprise ring out smartly.
Then Rhodes, hesitating for a moment, added, "My grandmother was a lady. As to beauty"—the sneer about beauty had evidently rankled—"why, such things as prettiness and coquetry were never thought of in connection with her. She was a lady, and when you've said that you've said it all. And she was such a superior woman! My grandfather outmarried himself more than any man you ever saw."
Shattuck was silent for a moment. "I thought," he remarked at length, "that it was the American eagle that fluttered most through the rhetoric of electioneering eloquence. I didn't know that the lettuce-bird had superseded the big national fowl."
"Oh," exclaimed Rhodes, who had waited on his friend's words with a knitted brow, and he drew a long breath of comprehension, "grandpa did use to say the prettiest girl he ever saw was this Madeline Crayshaw. He never saw her but once. It was at a bran dance on Tomahawk Creek—some sort of a political commotion, speechifying in favor of Henry Clay or some other old cock. He said her hair was the color of nothing in this world but a lettuce-bird, and she had the disposition of a panther. He said she reminded him of a wild woman—some sort of savage—and he wondered if she could look pleased, and if she were subject to the same sort of compliments that other girls like. So when she was glowering round at the other girls as if she could rend 'em with jealousy, he tried the lettuce-bird dodge. And, bless your soul, she was as pleased and sweet as pie."
"And has remembered it for forty-five years, poor thing!" said Shattuck.
"Ha! ha! ha! 'Poor thing!' She never made you learn to kick and bite and fight to keep a whole skin and a whole set of bones. Fee Guthrie don't say 'poor thing!' I won't go back to the first husband, for I hadn't the pleasure of his acquaintance, and he may have died simply because it was too much trouble to live."
"And you made her believe that you thought your grandfather was in love with her—had been rejected by her. You deceived her!"
"Man alive! how could I? She knew she never saw him but once in her life. And how can I make tenders of his affections at this late day? Tenders of affection are not retroactive. A man can't flirt as proxy for his dead grandfather. It was merely a little electioneering compliment."
"Oh, Rhodes, how do you manage to look yourself in the face in the mirror?" exclaimed Shattuck, with a laugh.