"What's that?"
"Make a julep."
Meredith considered this at some length. "No, Bob," he said at length, "they can't. But I once met a statesman from Maine who made a thing that looked like a julep, tasted like a julep, and that—I'd say it if it was my dying statement—had the same effect."
"She must be better-looking than Great-grandmother Pringle," said Jonstone. "She must be able to make a julep, and she must have a sister just like her. Can you lend me a suit of clothes till we get to New York?"
"I can lend you anything from a yachting suit to a Bulgarian uniform."
"And you're sure I'm not imposing on you in the matter of the silver?"
"Sure. I just want to know it's mine."
In the morning, soon after this precious pair had breakfasted, a boy went through the train with newspapers and magazines. He proclaimed in the sweetest Virginian voice that his magazines were just out, but a copy of The Four Seasons which Colonel Meredith bought proved not only to be of an ancient date but to have had coffee spilled upon it.
At the moment when this discovery was made, the youthful paper-monger had just swung from the crawling train to the platform of a way station, so there was no redress. The cousins agreed, laughing, that if a Yankee had played them such a trick they would have wished to cut his heart out, but that, turned upon them by a fellow countryman, it was merely a proof of smartness and push.