"Well, Ladybird, we'll have the gentlemen to dinner at any rate. As soon as I heard of your coming I went out with my gun, and brought back two big wild turkeys, as fat as butter. I thought you might come under escort, so I've had them put both the birds on the spit. I'll wager you gentlemen haven't seen a wild turkey this fall."
So he ran on with his hospitable greetings, managing in his joyous nervousness to upset two of the glasses which he had ordered a servant to bring with the decanters, for the troopers' refreshment. Agatha managed presently to get a word with him aside.
"It is three o'clock, Chummie—an hour before dinner. I'll have time enough to boil myself a little. Think of it, Chummie, I haven't had a hot bath for a whole week!" Then turning to her escort she excused herself until the dinner-hour.
This was an unhappy circumstance, as Agatha learned when she came down, fresh-faced, to the dinner. For, left alone with the troopers, the old gentleman naturally asked them concerning the details of her coming into Stuart's lines, and as the story of her dash through the canister fire was echoing throughout the army, the young fellows grew enthusiastic in their minute descriptions of her peril and her heroism. When Agatha reappeared, therefore, the old gentleman was all a-tremble. He met her at the foot of the stairway, and a little scene followed, which told the girl not only that he knew all that had been most harrowing in her experiences, but that the knowledge of it would make her coming absence cruelly hard for him to bear.
At dinner he found himself too tremulous to carve, and, for the first time in his life, he relinquished that most hospitable of all a host's offices to the younger men.
"Never mind, Ladybird," he said, cheerily, as he saw how greatly troubled she was, "it will pass presently, and you shall find me quite myself again in the morning. We're going after the birds, you know, you and I. I haven't allowed a partridge to be killed on the plantation this fall, so that you might be sure of a good day's sport with Chummie."
Thus it came about that as the old man and the young woman sat in the firelight that evening, after the troopers were gone, Agatha changed her purpose and told him of Baillie Pegram. Delicately, but with perfect candour, she told the whole of the truth.
"I learned to like him very much while I was in Richmond last Christmas, and I was not to blame for that, was I, Chummie? He was so kind to me, so good in a thousand little ways, so gentle in all his strength that he reminded me of you, more than anybody else ever did. I used often to think that he was very much the sort of man you must have been when you were in your twenties. There was no reason, that I knew of, why I should not like him. He was a gentleman, the representative of one of the best families in the State, a man of the highest character, well-educated, travelled, intellectual, and of charming manners. He did more than anybody else—or everybody else for that matter—to make the time pass pleasantly for me. You see how it was, don't you, Chummie?"
The old gentleman nodded his head with a smile, and answered:
"I see how it was, Ladybird. Go on. Tell me all about it."