"Where's Mr. Ravenel?"
"Who, Jeff-Jack? Oh, he's over yonder pickin' blackberries—no, he seldom ever touches—he has to be careful how he—Yes, sometimes he disremembers."
In town again, Halliday led the way to the public grammar and high schools. Garnet mentioned Montrose boastfully more than once.
"Why don't we go there?" asked one of the projectors, innocently.
"Oh—ah—wha'd you say, Colonel Proudfit? Yess, that's so, we pass right by it on ow way to Rosemont"—and they did, to the sweet satisfaction of the Misses Kinsington, who were resolved no railroad should come to Suez if they could prevent it.
At Rosemont Mr. Dinwiddie Pettigrew told each Northerner, as soon as he could get him from Mrs. Garnet's presence, that Virginia was the Mother of Presidents; that the first slaves ever brought to this country came in Yankee ships; that Northern envy of Southern opulence and refinement had been the mainspring of the abolition movement; and—with a smile of almost womanly heroism—that he—or his father at least—had lost all his slaves in the war.
At Widewood, whither Garnet and Ravenel led, the travelers saw only Judge March and the scenery. He brought them water to the fence in a piggin, and with a wavering hand served it out in a gourd.
"I could 'a' served it in a glass, gentlemen, but we Southe'ne's think it's sweeteh drank fum a gode."
"We met your son at the cotillion," said one, and the father lighted up with such confident expectation of a compliment that the stranger added, cordially, "He's quite noted," though he had not heard of the affair with Leggett.
On the way back Garnet praised everything and everybody. He wished they could have seen Daphne Dalrymple! If it were not for the Northern prejudice against Southern writers, her poems would—"See that fox—ah! he's hid, now."