Mrs. March bit her lip. "I can't imagine who would ever"—she bit it again. "Mr. Ravenel, do you remember those lines of mine—
"'O we women are so blind'"?
"Yes. But don't call me Mr. Ravenel."
"Why, why not?"
"It sounds so cold." He shuddered.
"It isn't meant so. It's not in my nature to be cold. It's you who are cold." She hushed as abruptly as a locust. A large man, wet with the heat, stood saluting. Mr. Ravenel rose and introduced Mr. Gamble, president of the road, a palpable, rank Westerner; whereupon it was she who was cold. Mr. Gamble praised the "panorama gliding by."
"Yes." She glanced out over the wide, hot, veering landscape that rose and sank in green and yellow slopes of corn, cotton, and wheat. The president fanned his soaking shirt-collar and Mrs. March with a palm-leaf fan.
"Mercury ninety-nine in Pulaski City," he said to Ravenel, and showed a telegram. Mr. Ravenel began to ask if he might introduce——
"Mr. March! Well, you have changed since the day you took Major Garnet and Mr. Fair and I to see that view in the mountains! If anybody'd a-told me that I'd ever be president of—Thanks, no sir." He wouldn't sit. He'd just been sitting and talking, he said, "with the two beauties, Miss Halliday and Miss Garnet." Didn't Mrs. March think them such?
She confessed they looked strong and well, and sighed an unresentful envy.