“Your present visitors seem chiefly young ladies,” I hazarded.
“Hevn’t you heard?” and mine host looked at me as if to reassure himself as to my social position. “They is society folks from Knoxville—down here givin’ a play—‘The Pirates of Penzance,’” and he handed me a newspaper wherein he pointed to a double-leaded announcement setting forth that the well-known Amateur Shakespeare Comedy Club of Knoxville, consisting of ladies and gentlemen of the upper social circles of that city, would appear in this well-known opera, the article closing with a tribute to the personal charms of Miss Birdie McClung, the principal member of the company.
“They hev come down in a Pullman cyar, all to themselves, quite special,” said the innkeeper.
“Are any of them married, Colonel Kipperson?” said I, timidly.
The colonel looked at me with scorn; and just then a peal of rippling laughter, melodious as the waves of the Tennessee upon Muscle Shoals, rang through the thin partition, accompanied by the crash of some falling missile, I think, a hair-brush.
“Does that look as if they wuz married?” said he, and turned upon his heel, as one who gave me up at last. “Supper’s at six,” he added, relenting, at the door.
Coe turned up at supper, but we saw nothing of the fair actresses; and the evening we passed socially with the leading spirits of the hotel: Judge Hankinson, Colonel Wilkinson, General McBride, Tim Healy, the railroad contractor, and two or three black bottles. Colonel Wilkinson and General McBride had been trying a case before Judge Hankinson, and both were disposed to criticise the latter’s rulings, but amiably, as became gentlemen over a whiskey-bottle in the evening. At midnight, just as the judge was ordering a fourth bottle, the door opened, and in walked a very beautiful young woman with black hair and eyes. “Good-evening, Miss Juliet,” said the others, as we rose and bowed.
Miss Juliet walked up to the judge, who with difficulty got up, and followed her out of the room. “Good-night, jedge,” and in the pause that followed, General McBride remarked pathetically that “the jedge wasn’t what he used to wuz.”
“No,” said the colonel, with a sigh, “I’ve seen the time when he wouldn’t leave a third bottle of his own.”
“What relation is Miss Juliet to Judge Wilkinson?” asked Coe.