“Never mind that; we are all made of it,” the colonel said. “I’ll have the woman set you out some breakfast; afterward we’ll talk about the boy.”
“I thank you kindly, Colonel Price, but I already et, long ago, what little I had stomach for,” said she.
“Then if you will excuse me for a moment, madam?” begged the colonel, seeing her seated stiffly in an upholstered chair.
She half rose in acknowledgment of his bow, awkward and embarrassed.
“You’re excusable, sir,” said she.
The colonel dashed away down the hall. She was only a mountain woman, certainly, but she was a lady by virtue of having been a gentleman’s wife. And she had caught him without a coat!
Mrs. Newbolt sat stiffly in the parlor in surroundings which were of the first magnitude of grandeur to her, with corn pictures adorning the walls along with some of the colonel’s early transgressions in landscapes, and the portraits of 177 colonels in the family line who had gone before. That was the kind of fixings Joe would like, thought she, nodding her serious head; just the kind of things that Joe would enjoy and understand, like a gentleman born to it.
“Well, he comes by it honest,” said she aloud.
Colonel Price did not keep her waiting long. He came back in a black coat that was quite as grand as Judge Little’s, and almost as long. That garment was the mark of fashion and gentility in that part of the country in those days, a style that has outlived many of the hearty old gentlemen who did it honor, and has descended even to this day with their sons.
“My son’s innocent of what they lay to him, Colonel Price,” said Mrs. Newbolt, with impressive dignity which lifted her immediately in the colonel’s regard.