“We are from Mississippi, yes. But how could you tell?”
“You said, ‘I don’t reckon.’”
“Where you would have said—?”
Philip permitted himself a grim little smile. “Where my grandfather might have said, ‘I don’t calculate.’”
“Oh; then you are a Yankee?”
“I suppose that is what I should be called—in Mississippi. My home is in New Hampshire.”
“I softened it some,” said the girl half mockingly. “When I was small, I used to hear it always as ‘damn’ Yankee,’ and for the longest time I supposed it was just one word. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Why should I mind? The war has been over for quite a long time.”
“Not so very long; and it will be still longer before it is over for us of the South. We were whipped, you know.” Then, turning to the car window: “Oh, look! See the deer!”
“Antelope,” Philip corrected gravely. “They told me in Kansas City that only a few years ago the buffalo were so thick out here that sometimes the trains had to be stopped to let the herd go by.”