II
TEN summers after this, the old Colonel and Miss Jemima and Miss Letty scraped up money enough to spend a summer in a cheap boarding-house at Newport. Many surprises awaited the Colonel upon his first visit to Newport since “before the war, sir.” In the first place, the money they paid for their plain rooms seemed a very imposing sum to them, and they were extremely surprised to find how small it was regarded at Newport.
“Newport, my dear Jemima and Letty, is a more expensive place than the White Sulphur in its palmiest days, when it had a monopoly of the chivalry of the South,” announced the Colonel, oracularly.
Letty had innocently expected a great triumph, especially with her wardrobe. She had no less than five white Swiss muslin frocks, all tucked and beruffled within an inch of her life, and she had also a lace parasol, besides one that had belonged to her mother, and several lace flounces and a set of pearls. This outfit, thought Letty, vain and proud, was bound to make a sensation. But it did not. However, no matter what Letty wore, she was in no danger of being put behind the door. First, because she was so very, very pretty, and second, because she was so obviously a thoroughbred, from the sole of her little arched foot, up to the crown of her delicate, proud head. And Letty was so extremely haughty. But she soon found out that Swiss muslin frocks don’t count at Newport, and that even a Corbin of Corbin Hall, who lodged in a cheap place, was not an object of flattering attention.
And the more neglected she was, the more toploftical she became. So did the Colonel, and so did Miss Jemima. Walking down Bellevue avenue with the Colonel, Letty would criticize severely the stately carriages, the high-stepping horses and the superbly dressed women and natty men that are characteristic of that swell drive. But when a carriage would pass with a crest on its doors, the Colonel’s white teeth showed beneath his mustache in a grim smile.
“One of the Popes,” he remarked, with suave sarcasm, “who started in life as a cobbler, took for his papal arms a set of cobblers’ tools. But I perceive no indication whatever, in this community of retired tradespeople, that they have not all inherited their wealth since the days of the Saxon Heptarchy.”
For a time it seemed as if not one single person at Newport had ever heard of Colonel Archibald Corbin, of Corbin Hall. But one afternoon, as Letty and her grandfather were taking a dignified promenade,—they could not afford to drive at Newport,—they noticed a stylish dog-cart approaching, with a hale, manly fellow, neither particularly young nor especially handsome, handling the ribbons. Just as he caught sight of the Colonel he pulled up, and in another moment he had thrown the reins to the statuesque person who sat on the back seat, and was advancing toward the old man, hat in hand.
“This must be Colonel Corbin. I can’t be mistaken,” he cried, in a cordial, rich voice.
Letty took in at a glance how well set up he was, how fresh and wholesome and manly.