"I don't know whether we could help it," he said; "but we would try."
"You do not mean that it would come to fighting?"
"I do not think they would be such fools. I hope we are supposing a very unlikely thing, Miss Randolph."
I hoped so. But that impression of Southern character troubled me yet. Fighting! I looked at the peaceful hills, feeling as if indeed "all the foundations of the earth" would be "out of course."
"What would you do in case it came to fighting?" said my neighbour. The words startled me out of my meditations.
"I could not do anything."
"I beg your pardon. Your favour—your countenance, would do much; on one side or the other. You would fight—in effect—as surely as I should."
I looked up. "Not against you," I said; for I could not bear to be misunderstood.
There was a strange sparkle in Mr. Thorold's eye; but those flashes of light came and went so like flashes, that I could not always tell what they meant. The tone of his voice, however, I knew expressed pleasure.