Miss Lou | Page 7

each other, then stared at their niece, who, with hot face, maintained the pretence of eating her supper. "Truly, Louise," began Mr. Baron, solemnly, "you are indulging in strange and unbecoming language. I have revealed to you your pecuniary affairs, and I have more than once suggested an alliance which is in accordance with our wishes and your interests, in order to prove to you how scrupulous we are in promoting your welfare. We look for grateful recognition and a wise, persistent effort on your part to further our efforts in your behalf."
"It doesn't seem to me wise to talk to a mere child about property and marriage," said the girl, breathing quickly in the consciousness of her temerity and her rising spirit of rebellion.
"You are ceasing to be a mere child," resumed her uncle, severely.
"That cannot be," Miss Lou interrupted. "You and aunt speak to me as you did years ago when I was a child. Can you expect me to have a woman's form and not a woman's mind? Are women told exactly what they must think and do, like little children? Aunt threatens to forbid visits to my old mammy. If I were but five years old she couldn't do more. You speak of marrying me to my cousin as if I had merely the form and appearance of a woman, and no mind or wishes of my own. I have never said I wanted to marry him or any one."
"Why, Louise, you are verging toward flat rebellion," gasped her uncle, laying down his knife and fork.
"Oh, no, uncle! I'm merely growing up. You should have kept the library locked; you should never have had me taught to read, if you expected me to become the mere shell of a woman, having no ideas of my own."
"We wish you to have ideas, and have tried to inculcate right ideas."
"Which means only your ideas, uncle."
"Louise, are you losing your mind?"
"No, uncle, I am beginning to find it, and that I have a right to use it. I am willing to pay all due respect and deference to you and to aunt, but I protest against being treated as a child on one hand and as a wax figure which can be stood up and married to anybody on the other. I have patiently borne this treatment as long as I can, and I now reckon the time has come to end it."
Mr. Baron was thunderstruck and his wife was feeling for her smelling-bottle. Catching a glimpse of Zany, where she stood open- mouthed in her astonishment, her master said, sternly, "Leave the room!" Then he added to his niece, "Think of your uttering such wild talk before one of our people! Don't you know that my will must be law on this plantation?"
"I'm not one of your people," responded the girl, haughtily. "I'm your niece, and a Southern girl who will call no man master."
At this moment there was a knock at the door. Without waiting for it to be opened, a tall, lank man entered and said, hastily, "Mr. Baron, I reckon there's news which yer orter hear toreckly." He was the overseer of the plantation.

CHAPTER III
MAD WHATELY
Mr. Baron was one of the few of the landed gentry in the region who was not known by a military title, and he rather prided himself on the fact. "I'm a man of peace," he was accustomed to say, and his neighbors often remarked, "Yes, Baron is peaceable if he has his own way in everything, but there's no young blood in the county more ready for a fray than he for a lawsuit." "Law and order" was Mr. Baron's motto, but by these terms he meant the perpetuity of the conditions under which he and his ancestors had thus far lived. To distrust these conditions was the crime of crimes. In his estimation, therefore, a Northern soldier was a monster surpassed only by the out-and-out abolitionist. While it had so happened that, even as a young man, his tastes had been legal rather than military, he regarded the war of secession as more sacred than any conflict of the past, and was willing to make great sacrifices for its maintenance. He had invested all his funds as well as those of his niece in Confederate bonds, and he had annually contributed a large portion of the product of his lands to the support of the army. Living remote from the scenes of actual strife, he had been able to maintain his illusions and hopes to a far greater extent than many others of like mind with himself; but as the war drew toward its close, even the few newspapers he read were compelled to justify their name in some degree by giving very unpalatable information. As none are