“Eleven years old!” sighed the colonel. “It makes my mouth water! I’ve been subsisting on home-made grape wine for over a year. Think of it—a Pennington! Why, my ancestors must be writhing in their Virginia graves!”
“On the contrary, they’re probably laughing in their sleeves. They died before July 1, 1919,” interposed Custer. “Eleven years old—eight years in the wood,” he mused aloud, shooting a quick glance in the direction of Guy Evans, who suddenly became deeply interested in a novel lying on a table beside his chair, notwithstanding the fact that he had read it six months before and hadn’t liked it. “And it will go hard with the traffickers, too,” continued young Pennington. “Well, I should hope it would. They’ll probably hang ’em, the vile miscreants!”
Guy had risen and walked to the doorway opening upon the patio.
“I wonder what is keeping Eva,” he remarked.
“Getting hungry?” asked Mrs. Pennington. “Well, I guess we all are. Suppose we don’t wait any longer? Eva won’t mind.”
“If I wait much longer,” observed the colonel, “some one will have to carry me into the dining room.”
As they crossed the library toward the dining room the two young men walked behind their elders.
“Is your appetite still good?” inquired Custer.
“Shut up!” retorted Evans. “You give me a pain.”
They had finished their soup before Eva joined them, and after the men were reseated they took up the conversation where it had been interrupted. As usual, if not always brilliant, it was at least diversified, for it included many subjects from grand opera to the budding of English walnuts on the native wild stock, and from the latest novel to the most practical method of earmarking pigs. Paintings, poems, plays, pictures, people, horses, and home-brew—each came in for a share of the discussion, argument, and raillery that ran round the table.