“Certainly, sir; if you tell them your name—and don’t try to flirt with them,” Dick added, with a laugh. “Yonder is one, now—Miss Carrington,” nodding toward the far side of the street.
Croyden turned.—It was she! the girl of the blue-black hair and slender silken ankles.
“She’s Captain Carrington’s granddaughter,” Dick went on with the Southerner’s love for the definite in genealogy. “Her father and mother both died when she was a little tot, sir, and they—that is, the grandparents, sir—raised her. That’s the Carrington place she’s turning in at. Ah——”
The girl glanced across and, recognizing Dick (and, it must be admitted, her Clarendon inquirer as well), nodded.
Both men took off their hats. But Croyden noticed that the older man could teach him much in the way it should be done. He did it shortly, 55 sharply, in the city way; Dick, slowly, deferentially, as though it were an especial privilege to uncover to her.
“Miss Carrington is a beauty!” Croyden exclaimed, looking after her. “Are there more like her, in Hampton?”
“I’m too old, sir, to be a competent judge,” returned Dick, “but I should say we have several who trot in the same class. I mean, sir——”
“I understand!” laughed Croyden. “It’s no disrespect in a Marylander, I take it, when he compares the ladies with his race-horses.”
“It’s not, sir! At least, that’s the way we of the older generation feel; our ladies and our horses run pretty close together. But that spirit is fast disappearing, sir! The younger ones are becoming—commercialized, if you please. It’s dollars first, and then the ladies, with them—and the horses nowhere. Though I don’t say it’s not wise. Horses and the war have almost broken us, sir. We lost the dollars, or forgot about them and they lost themselves, whichever way it was, sir. It’s right that our sons should start on a new track and run the course in their own way—Yes, sir,” suddenly recollecting himself, “Miss Carrington’s a pretty girl, and so’s Miss Tayloe and Miss Lashiel and a heap more. Indeed, sir, Hampton is famed on the Eastern Sho’ for her women. I’ll attend to your baggage, and the telephone, sir, and if there is anything else I can do, pray command 56 me. Drop in and see me when you get up town. Good day, sir, good day.” And removing his hat with a bow just a little less deferential than the one he had given to Miss Carrington, he proceeded up the street, leisurely and deliberately, as though the world were waiting for him.
“And he is a real estate agent!” reflected Croyden. “The man who, according to our way of thinking, is the acme of hustle and bustle and business, and schemes to trap the unwary. Truly, the Eastern Shore has much to learn—or we have much to unlearn! Well, I have tried the one—and failed. Now, I’m going to try the other. It seems to promise a quiet life, at least.”