The Battle Ground | Page 6

my hand?--Yes, you may drive on, Big Abel," to the driver, "and remember to take out those bulbs of Spanish lilies for your mistress. You will find them under the seat."
The whip cracked again above the fat old roans, and with a great creak the coach rolled on its way.
"I--I--if you please, I'd rather you wouldn't," stammered the child.
The Major chuckled again, still holding out his hand. Had she been eighty instead of eight, the gesture could not have expressed more deference. "So you don't like old men any better than boys!" he exclaimed.
"Oh, yes, sir, I do--heaps," said Betty. She transferred the frog's foot to her left hand, and gave him her right one. "When I marry, I'm going to marry a very old gentleman--as old as you," she added flatteringly.
"You honour me," returned the Major, with a bow; "but there's nothing like youth, my dear, nothing like youth." He ended sadly, for he had been a gay young blood in his time, and the enchantment of his wild oats had increased as he passed further from the sowing of them. He had lived to regret both the loss of his gayety and the languor of his blood, and, as he drifted further from the middle years, he had at last yielded to tranquillity with a sigh. In his day he had matched any man in Virginia at cards or wine or women--to say nothing of horseflesh; now his white hairs had brought him but a fond, pale memory of his misdeeds and the boast that he knew his world--that he knew all his world, indeed, except his wife.
"Ah, there's nothing like youth!" he sighed over to himself, and the child looked up and laughed.
"Why do you say that?" she asked.
"You will know some day," replied the Major. He drew himself erect in his tight black broadcloth, and thrust out his chin between the high points of his collar. His long white hair, falling beneath his hat, framed his ruddy face in silver. "There are the lights of Uplands," he said suddenly, with a wave of his hand.
Betty quickened her pace to his, and they went on in silence. Through the thick grove that ended at the roadside she saw the windows of her home flaming amid the darkness. Farther away there were the small lights of the negro cabins in the "quarters," and a great one from the barn door where the field hands were strumming upon their banjos.
"I reckon supper's ready," she remarked, walking faster. "Yonder comes Peter, from the kitchen with the waffles."
They entered an iron gate that opened from the road, and went up a lane of lilac bushes to the long stuccoed house, set with detached wings in a grove of maples. "Why, there's papa looking for me," cried the child, as a man's figure darkened the square of light from the hall and came between the Doric columns of the portico down into the drive.
"You won't have to search far, Governor," called the Major, in his ringing voice, and, as the other came up to him, he stopped to shake hands. "Miss Betty has given me the pleasure of a stroll with her."
"Ah, it was like you, Major," returned the other, heartily. "I'm afraid it isn't good for your gout, though."
He was a small, soldierly-looking man, with a clean-shaven, classic face, and thick, brown hair, slightly streaked with gray. Beside the Major's gaunt figure he appeared singularly boyish, though he held himself severely to the number of his inches, and even added, by means of a simplicity almost august, a full cubit to his stature. Ten years before he had been governor of his state, and to his friends and neighbours the empty honour, at least, was still his own.
"Pooh! pooh!" the older man protested airily, "the gout's like a woman, my dear sir--if you begin to humour it, you'll get no rest. If you deny yourself a half bottle of port, the other half will soon follow. No, no, I say--put a bold foot on the matter. Don't give up a good thing for the sake of a bad one, sir. I remember my grandfather in England telling me that at his first twinge of gout he took a glass of sherry, and at the second he took two. 'What! would you have my toe become my master?' he roared to the doctor. 'I wouldn't give in if it were my whole confounded foot, sir!' Oh, those were ripe days, Governor!"
"A little overripe for the toe, I fear, Major."
"Well, well, we're sober enough now, sir, sober enough and to spare. Even the races are dull things. I've just been in to have a look at that new mare Tom Bickels is putting on the track, and bless my soul, she can't hold