The major pulled his mustache meditatively. “Not a bad idea,” he said. “He’s starting right—eh, Southall? You’re bringing the view-point of practical science to bear on the problem, Mr. Valiant.”
“I’m afraid I’m a sad sketch as a scientist,” laughed the other. “My point of view has to be a somewhat practical one. I must be self-supporting. Damory Court is a big estate. It has grain lands and forest as well. If my ancestors lived from it, I can. It’s not only that,” he went on more slowly, “I want to make the most of the place for its own sake, too. Not only of its possibilities for earning, but of its natural beauties. I lack the resources I once had, but I can give it thought and work, and if they can bring Damory Court back to anything even remotely resembling what it once was, I’ll not spare either.”
The major smote his knee and even the doctor’s face showed a grim, if transient approval. “I believe you’ll do it!” exclaimed the former. “And let me say, sah, that the neighborhood is not unaware of the splendid generosity which is responsible for the present lack of which you speak.”
Valiant put out his hand with a little gesture of deprecation, but the other disregarded it. “Confound it, sah, it was to be expected of a Valiant. Your ancestors wrote their names in capital letters over this county. They were an up and down lot, but good or bad (and, as Southall says, I reckon”—he nodded toward the great portrait above the couch—“they weren’t all little woolly lambs) they did big things in a big way.”
Valiant leaned forward eagerly, a question on his lips. But at the moment a diversion occurred in the shape of Uncle Jefferson, who reentered, bearing a tray on which sat sundry jugs and clinking glasses, glowing with white and green and gold.
“You old humbug,” said the doctor, “don’t you know the major’s that poisoned with mint-juleps already that he can’t get up before eight in the morning?”
“Well, suh,” tittered Uncle Jefferson, “Ah done foun’ er mint-baid down below de kitchens dis mawnin’. Yo’-all gemmun’ ’bout de bigges’ expuhts in dis yeah county, en Ah reck’n Mars’ Valiant sho’ ’sist on yo’ samplin’ et.”
“Sah,” said the major feelingly, turning to his host, “I’m proud to drink your health in the typical beverage of Virginia!” He touched glasses with Valiant and glared at the doctor, who was sipping his own thoughtfully. “In my travels,” he said, “I have become acquainted with a drink called pousse-café, which contains all the colors of the rainbow. But for chaste beauty, sah, give me this. No garish combination, you will observe. A frosted goblet, golden at the bottom as an autumn corn-ear, shading into emerald and then into snow. On top a white rim of icebergs with the mint sprigs like fairy pine-trees. Poems have been written on the julep, sah.”
“They make good epitaphs, too,” observed the doctor.
“I notice your glass isn’t going begging,” the major retorted. “Unc’ Jefferson, that’s as good mint as grew in the gyarden of Eden. See that those lazy niggers of yours don’t grub the patch out by mistake.”