At any rate, I know that seemingly a very long time ago, in comparison with myself, he was born in Virginia. In his youth he was graduated from the University at Charlottesville, and later from the Jefferson Medical College. Upon receiving his diploma, entitling him to practise medicine, he came directly to Oldmeadow. Except for four years spent as a surgeon in the Confederate army, he has given his life to this old Kentucky town on the Ohio river. For the present this is enough of him, save to mention that other than Nance, with the sun-colored hair; the river, which embraces "goin' a-fishin'"; and General Robert E. Lee, a name symbolizing all that Virginia and the South mean to him, he loves the little town, with its old-fashioned customs and traditions, which has been the background for most of his activities.
The morning following our glorious introduction to the magnificent Jean François I was out early and bound for the commons. I scarcely expected Nance to be up. I felt that there would be something intimate and personal, perhaps undefinable, it is true, between this master of the happy caravan and myself because we were both men. I had made up my mind that he was a woman-hater. As I hurried along the street my plans were brutally shattered, for whom should I encounter but the red-headed jade herself, grinning quite wickedly, even though her hand was tightly gripped in that of her Aunt Barbara, whose serious features were drawn together in grim determination.
"I want you, too, Charles Reubelt," said Miss Longstreet curtly, and with evident disapproval not only in her tone, but in the look with which she surveyed my full diminutive person.
"Yes, we want you, Charles Reubelt," Nance reiterated in close, but undetected, imitation of her Aunt Barbara.
Now while this really very charming spinster had no actual command over me, having quite tangible parents two blocks away, yet I acknowledged an assumed authority felt by every boy and girl in Oldmeadow. So, yielding, I fell in behind, marching meekly to Doctor Longstreet's office.
We entered in single file, Miss Longstreet shoving Nance unceremoniously before her. I lingered, cap in hand, near the open door.
"Felix," she began, in a voice slightly agitated by the fear of the unknown result in approaching the old doctor upon any subject, "do you know where these children were last night?"
"No, my dear Barbara," he replied with irony, looking up from a series of powders he was proportioning with his jack-knife on a piece of newspaper; "were they drowned?"
"No, but she might well have been, for all that you look after her!" she exclaimed, now leaving me out of the arraignment and giving herself solely to Nance.