"Well, I'm sorry to lose you, Ben. Perhaps you'll come back to the road in another capacity when I am dead. It will be a bigger road then. We're buying up the Tennessee and Carolina, you know."
"It's a great road you've made, General, and I like to serve it. By the way, I'm going to West Virginia in a day or two to have a look at the West Virginia and Wyanoke. What do you know of the coal fields at Wyanoke?"
"No 'count ones. I wouldn't meddle with that little road if I were you. It will go bankrupt presently, and then we'll buy it, I suppose, at our own price. It runs through scrub land populated by old field pines. How is that miner brother of yours, Ben? I saw Sally at the theatre with him. You've got a jewel, my boy, there's no doubt of that. When I looked at her sailing down the room on his arm last night, by George, I wished I was forty years younger and married to her myself."
Some hours later I repeated his remark to Sally, when I went home at dusk and found her sitting before a wood fire in her bedroom, with her hat and coat on, just as she had dropped there after a drive with President.
"Well, I wouldn't have the General at any age. You needn't be jealous, Ben," she responded. "I'm too much like Aunt Matoaca."
"He always said you were," I retorted, "but, oh, Sally, you are an angel! When I saw you rise at dinner last night, I wanted to squeeze you in my arms and kiss you before them all."
The little scar by her mouth dimpled with the old childish expression of archness.
"Suppose you do it now, sir," she rejoined, with the primness of Miss Mitty, and a little later, "What else was there to do but rise, you absurd boy? Poor mamma used to tell me that grandpapa always said to her, 'When in doubt choose the kindest way.'"
"And yet he disinherited his favourite daughter."
"Which only proves, my dear, how much easier it is to make a proverb than to practise it."