It will be seen that, by the close of their period, Doctor Vardaman had grown to be pretty familiar in the Pallinder household. Mazie professed a prodigious admiration for him. "He does say the cutest things!" she remarked enthusiastically. But Mazie's attitude toward the other sex was never anything but that of complete appreciation. I have seen her turn her eyes on the coloured butler when commanding a fresh relay of waffles with an expression to draw from him rubies, let alone waffles! Her liking for the doctor was perhaps as sincere a sentiment as she could harbour; who could forbear a fondness for that genial, tolerant, grey-headed satirist? In him were to be found all the strangely dissonant yet most manly qualities of his generation. In the early eighties there was still extant a tribe of hearty old gentlemen who wore black silk stocks, swore freely, and knew Henry Clay. You may see their strong humorous faces, shirt-frills, and waving forelocks upon scores of cracked canvases in how many Middle-Western homes! Grandfather rode circuit with Swayne and Tom Ewing; he sat in Congress with that Southern statesman of whom it was said that when he took snuff all South Carolina sneezed. Perhaps he remembered Chapultepec and the heights of Monterey; it is likely that he surveyed the first turnpike, designed the first Courthouse, performed the first mastoid operation in the State, in the country. In all things I think he played a man's part, and maybe something more, without any heroics; I knew many of him, and it cannot be denied that he would sometimes get a sheet in the wind's eye, and tell robustly indecorous stories after the second glass of whisky-punch sitting around the hearth of a winter's evening. There was that one about the English visitor at Niagara, who, being conducted around the place by the guide, out to the little tower on Table Rock, and down on the Maid of the Mist like everyone else, wrote his name in the guests' book, and a conundrum: "Why am I like Desdemona? Because——" But, at this point, by an ingenious manoeuvre, someone invariably called me from the room! And, strange to say, I was not suffered to return; Desdemona was in the nature of a prelude, I suspect. We have changed all that; who so plain-spoken as the lady-novelist of to-day, whom everybody reads, and, what is more, discusses? Who so wise as our young people? Nobody would be at the pains to banish them from the room. They would not laugh at or with grandpa; they would only wonder a little and pity him. They are all gone, all these humane old lads with their whisky-punches, their dreadful old fly-blown anecdotes, their extraordinary, innocent coarseness of mind. The type has vanished from among us, extinct like the dinosaur, dead as Desdemona! It is hard to figure them pacing beneath the cloudy porticos of that rather shoddy gilt Heaven in which they stoutly believed; but do they then wander the empty house of Dis, the idle, idle land? That were a doom at once unkind and unjust; rather let me fancy them beside the cheerful hearth in some comfortable limbo of good companionship and honest material pleasures; and if that too be a heresy and interdict, may the sod rest light where they sleep!

Doctor Vardaman differed signally from his contemporaries in being not at all disposed to punch and pruriency. He would have reddened like a winter apple at Desdemona; and I am bound to say that here Colonel Pallinder met him on equal ground. It would be worth a moralist's while to inspect that stout piece of goods which is men's modesty beside the curiously flimsy fabric we call the modesty of women. "It's funny about men," Kitty Oldham confided to me once. "They can be as bad as they want to, and so, when they're good they seem an awful lot better than we are!" That may be the root of the matter; Kitty was undeniably astute and observant in various small and eminently feminine ways. "Nobody's all good anyhow," was another of her sayings, "nor all bad either. I know by myself!" Colonel Pallinder was an example, too, had we been aware of it. I have heard since from many indignant sufferers that he was a swindling adventurer; yet Bayard himself could not have walked more circumspectly in certain paths. He believed with all his heart that his wife and daughter were beautiful and gifted above the ordinary lot of mortals; I think they never had a wish ungratified. That hand of his which they tell me was so ruthlessly busy about other peoples' pockets, was forever emptying his own for the satisfaction of his womenkind; the trait does not make any the better man of him, but I am sure there have been worse. His behaviour toward Mrs. Botlisch was a lesson in forbearance and good manners. He did more than endure her; he showed her precisely the same chivalric deference as the rest of us. Perhaps he was a little florid in the Southern style, and as became a military man, but I think he was never ridiculous. It happened one day that an ill-advised or maybe merely ill-bred young man having blurted out some joke, high-flavoured, derogatory to Mrs. Botlisch, over one of those famous juleps in the Pallinder dining-room, the colonel rose up and with a severe countenance, laid his hand upon the joker's arm and jerked him upright without much ceremony. "Don't mind him, Colonel," interposed an onlooker. "He—he's not used to ladies' society, you know." "Sir," said the colonel sedately, "I should have said he was not used to the society of gentlemen!" and with that bundled the offender out of the room and the house. Nor did the action make him enemies; the rest of the male company expressed an unqualified approval.

"I was a little afraid that he might want to resort to the 'code' as practised in Virginia or Mississippi, or wherever he hails from," said Doctor Vardaman, commenting on this occurrence, "and call upon my services as surgeon; but he was too shrewd, or in his way, too large-minded for that. On the whole Pallinder was the most attractive as well as the most diverting humbug I ever knew or can imagine. I liked him against my will. He was generous to the last penny—with money that was shadily come by, to be sure, but what would you have? He might have been as tight as the bark on a tree. He was a brave man and had borne himself gallantly on the field, and I am sure uncomplainingly in defeat. There was no sham about that limp of his at any rate. But he never spoke of these things, nor ever flourished the Lost Cause in your face, that I know of. Maybe it was all part of his policy, but I like better to think that he had the qualities of his defects."

It is to be supposed that Colonel Pallinder returned the doctor's regard. The old gentleman was their nearest, in fact almost their only neighbour, and the colonel used to dilate in comic vein upon the advantages of having a physician next door, and keeping on good terms with him. "'Hang it all, Miranda,' I said to my wife the other day, 'what do you want to call in young Sawbones—Pellets—whatever his name is, the doctor-lad you had here last week for, when you can have twice his experience and ten times the gumption he ever had or will have, by merely going as far as your own front gate? Pellets is a homoeop., anyhow. I don't like homoeops. Give me the old school; they knock you on the head with their whacking doses and kill you or cure you, put you out of your misery any way, while the others are still measuring out their infernal four dips of this and two swallows of that. When Mazie there was three years old she ate a whole bottle of sugared pills while the nurse wasn't looking. If it had been Doctor Vardaman's medicine, we'd have had to send for him and the undertaker and let 'em fight it out, and I'd back the doctor every time. As it was—never feazed her! Day before yesterday, my coachman came to me: 'Don' know what's the matter with me, boss. Feel mighty bad.' I asked him if he'd been to the doctor. 'Yes, sah, he give me this. I'se got to take fo' dips every hour.' 'Look here, James,' says I. 'I want you to notice just one thing. You're a big man, and that's an almighty small bottle. Do you think four dips of that is going to cure six-foot-two of nigger? It don't stand to reason. When I'm sick,' says I, 'I go to Doctor Vardaman. I want a doctor to take care of me. Quit practice? Oh, pshaw, pooh! Any doctor will always pull an ass out of a ditch on the Sabbath day—what's that they say about the letter of the law killing the spirit? Now you better go to him, too,' says I, 'if you know what's good for you. You hear me?' 'Lordy, Mistah Pallindah, you wouldn't tu'n me off for not gwine to yo' doctah?' 'No, James,' says I. 'I'd turn you off for not having any sense!' I believe he did go to you, doctor, and I'm much obliged. Of course you'll send the bill to me. I'm not like some people that think anything's good enough for a nigger—I want the poor devils that work for me to have the best that's going. When a man's brought up on a Virginia plantation with three or four hundred of 'em around, and knows he owns 'em all, and is responsible in a way to his Maker for every one of those black souls—why, sir, you can't get over the feeling all at once. Here, you, George, Sam, one of you bring another bottle of that twelve-year-old Bourbon and a syphon of soda. I won't have any whisky in the house, sir, under seven years old, and preferably ten—preferably ten or twelve. It comes a few dollars higher a bottle, but when you're getting a thing, you might as well get it good, and if whisky's not properly aged it's raw stuff, firewater, worst thing in the world for the stomach. My wife sometimes accuses me of extravagance in the table, but I always say: 'Well, Miranda, we've got to live, haven't we?' As long as Phosphate preferred keeps soaring skywards, and dividends keep rolling in without my having to do a lick of work to get 'em, I don't see that we're living too high. We keep within bounds, I guess. Within bounds. I don't intend to spend all my income just because my principal is invested in something as solid as a rock. By George, sir, I always save up a little wad every year—I can do it without straining myself, and manage to scratch along in tolerable comfort besides—so as to buy whatever Phosphate I can lay hands on, but it's getting scarce, mighty scarce. It's been pretty well gobbled up by the big fellows with money that always get hold of all the good things; only I'm what you might call on the inside, you know, and that gives me a chance to help myself or let in a friend once in a while. But it's no use showing the figures to Madame there, she can't make head or tail of 'em, women never can; she says they give her the headache. Now last week, I let out inadvertently—for I try never to bring my little business anxieties home—that I stood to lose fifteen thousand if Ozark Field went off another point. Gad, sir, she laid awake all night—thought we were going to the poorhouse right off! Couldn't help laughing, though I did feel sorry for her, too. Nothing I could say would reassure her—women are funny. Well, I wasn't just longing to lose my fifteen thousand either, a man don't like to be inconvenienced that way, even temporarily. Fifteen thousand means something to me, though it wouldn't be much to the people I'm thrown with all the time. I tell you, sir, those big capitalists, their money kind of scares you, and yet it gives you a mighty secure feeling to know that they're behind these enterprises. All their millions are made up of thousands after all, and they're not going to put a single thousand where they can't keep an eye on it, and see it breed. Fortunately Ozark Field went up to a hundred and seventeen instead of declining—I had confidence in it from the first. I bought at eighty, you know, so I'm pretty easy in my mind just now. If anybody were to ask me, though, I'd advise 'em to buy right now, for it won't ever take another drop, and I expect it'll be out of sight by the first of the year. Sam, chopped ice to Doctor Vardaman, and give Mr. Lewis a fresh glass."

Archie Lewis sat looking into his tumbler with a rather queer expression as the waiter put it down before him after sundry dexterous operations with lemon-peel and bitters. Perhaps he was thinking that, for a man who made a point of never bringing his business-affairs home, it was truly remarkable how inevitably Colonel Pallinder worked around to them in the course of a conversation, no matter what the subject with which it started. Phosphate preferred, Lone Star common, Ozark Field—I could not begin to enumerate the "enterprises" in which the colonel and his capitalist friends were interested. The jargon of the market-place will always be jargon to me; I dare say I have not even quoted it aright. To this day I have never been able to find out what Phosphate was; it may have been mined, assayed, and smelted; or strained out of a river, or compounded with retorts and crucibles for all of me. But, although nobody knew anything about it, it was, as I have said, easy to see that Phosphate, in Templeton's formula, was a paying proposition. Look at the Pallinders; people couldn't live that way for nothing; this we said to one another, thinking it clinched the argument, and not knowing that people live "in magnificent state," for nothing. Who is so care-free, so luxurious in his habits, so open-handed and open-hearted as the man who never pays his debts? I know of no one more to be envied. One of the things the Pallinders did was to wall in with glass the large porch of the dining-room, install a heating-apparatus, and make a conservatory of it; this, too, although they had leased the Gwynne house for three years only, and Mrs. Pallinder was constantly complaining of their cramped and inconvenient quarters. "Of course," she said languidly, "one can't expect much of a house at such a low rent, but the colonel and I have always had separate dressing-rooms. I thought I could make one do, for a while; but we're too crowded for any peace or comfort. The colonel wants to buy this house and add to it—but the end of it will be we'll have to build. The colonel keeps telling me to go to an architect or send for one—I shouldn't trust to anyone in this little town, you know. We'd have to select the building-lot, and get some man from Boston or New York to come out and look at it, and make the designs accordingly. But I'm so awfully lazy I can't make up my mind to all that bother and worry."

Such a low rent! Kitty and I exchanged a glance in spite of our manners. Archie Lewis had told us that Templeton, whom he saw every day in his father's office, had told him he had made the lease at a hundred and seventy-five a month; we did not think that a very low rent, we who lived contentedly enough in houses at one-fifth that amount, like by far the greater number of our friends. But the Pallinders plainly did not measure by our standards. Mazie had a fresh dress for every party; she wore almost as much jewelry as her mother, and when Mrs. Pallinder came out in all her diamonds, she was the most resplendent spectacle our society ever witnessed. Will anyone ever forget her appearance as Astarte at the Charity Ball? She twinkled all over with jewelled stars, serpents, rings, ear-drops, gew-gaws any Astarte might have been proud to own—"goddess excellently bright!" as Doctor Vardaman said. The ball took place during the Christmas holidays—the Pallinders' second Christmas with us—just before Mazie went to Washington, and, to quote the State Journal, "it was an event long to be remembered in the social annals of our city." Odd-Fellows' Hall was "a fairy-like dream of beauty," the same masterpiece of descriptive rhetoric reported. Mazie deferred her visit so as not to miss it, and went as Folly in a white dress with spangles—glittering fringes of white beads half a yard deep. Kitty Oldham appeared as Diana Vernon—"I can wear the big hat with feathers afterwards, you know," she thriftily remarked; she looked exceedingly trig in a scarlet waistcoat with her little chin cocked up on a white lawn stock. There was the usual supply of Watteau shepherdesses—I was one of them—toreadors, Continental soldiers in buff-and-blue, Queens-of-Hearts, Pierrots, and so on. Mrs. Pallinder's diaphanous and low-cut magnificence, heavily hung with jewelry, outshone everybody, and was a target for considerable unkind comment. A woman of her age! It was startling, to say the least. She could have gone as Queen Elizabeth or Lady Macbeth, but this was almost too theatrical; of course, she was a beautiful woman, and looked scarcely older than her own daughter, still——! "The reporters will describe every square inch of Mrs. Pallinder's costume," some young fellow said to Kitty Oldham. "They won't have to say much," retorted Kitty, with an oblique glance—a remark which, backed by her mother's well-known acidity of tongue, made Kitty's, reputation as a wit in our circle. The one person whom it did not seem to amuse was Gwynne Peters; and he listened with a singularly grum and discomposed face, and afterwards stalked off without a word, although he was in general, genial enough. Something must have gone at cross-purposes with Gwynne that night; he wore a Charles Stuart dress, and stood about in gloomy attitudes, with his sword, black velvet, and lace collar, looking the part to perfection; and he went away quite early after showing no attention to anyone except Mrs. Pallinder herself. But, indeed, the young men were about her constantly, and Astarte's popularity was not greatly increased thereby.

I remember driving home with Mazie to luncheon a day or so later, and coming unexpectedly upon a decent-looking young man sitting timidly amongst the gilt legs and peacock-blue upholstery of Mrs. Pallinder's parlour, waiting to "interview" that lady. He represented the State Journal, he said; and wanted to know if it was true that Mrs. Pallinder had worn her five-thousand-dollar diamond necklace at the ball, and if she would allow the Journal to publish a photograph of her in the costume.

"La me, I don't know; you'll have to ask her yourself," said Mazie in her gay drawl. And presently Mrs. Pallinder came in, very tall, sweeping and elegant in a long red broadcloth coat with black fur and braid, and "dolman" sleeves; and a black and red capote, as we called them. Laugh if you will; that was the way we dressed the winter of eighty-three—when we could afford it! The photograph appeared duly; and a picture of the necklace, too, with several more strands and pendants than belonged to it, so that we concluded the artist had drawn on his imagination or some representation of the crown-jewels of England, in order to be more effective.

"Pooh, that necklace never cost five thousand dollars, I don't believe it," Kitty said afterwards. She was a sharp little creature, as I have hinted; and her critical view of our Southern friends may have been shared by others, to judge by a remark young Lewis made to Doctor Vardaman, as they approached the latter's gate on their way from the Pallinders'. "You've got to take a long breath and get a good hold of something when the colonel's around," said Archie, knocking the ash from his cigar on the wrought-iron scroll along the top of the fence. He eyed the doctor enigmatically.

"I don't understand?"

"If you don't you might be blown away."