"My dear boy," Mrs. Scarboro told him, with great feeling, "you have been forgetting that you're a cousin of mine. Your mother and I were girls together. I want you to meet some other old friends of hers and your grandfather's," and she carried him off to a group of those wonderful old ladies who grow to purest perfection in South Carolina--low-voiced lovely old ladies, dressed in black silk, with cameo brooches at their throats, and lace caps on their white hair.
A little group of old gentlemen immediately foregathered with them. They knew who was and wasn't kin to Sally Hynds's son, unto the seventh generation.
"They've begun on the begats," chuckled The Author, "First Book of Chronicles, Chapters One to Four."
"Jelnik's really kin to them, and he ought to pay for the privilege," said Mr. Johnson.
The Author looked at the old ladies, on whose delicate withered hands the wedding-rings hung loosely, and at the erect old gentlemen with white goatees, and something whimsically tender came into his clever face.
"It is worth the price," he said, very gently--for him.
"Now, that was your soul speaking!" said Miss Emmeline, warmly. Instantly The Author wrinkled his nose, bristled his mustache, and looked like a hyena. Miss Martha Hopkins, worshipfully observant of the great man, caught his eye at that moment and thought he was scowling at _her_. She looked so stricken that The Author presently strolled over and sat down beside her, to her fluttering delight. But discovering that she was wholly unacquainted with the original verse of J. Gordon Coogler of Columbia, he first bitterly reproached her for neglecting home-made talent, and then proceeded to make sure that she would remember the Bard of the Congaree so long as she lived.
"Not know Coogler!" cried The Author, shrilly; "ignorant of the bard raised, so to speak, around your own door-step? Horrible! Listen to this!" said he, accusingly:
"Fair lady, on that snowy neck and half-clad bosom Which you so publicly reveal to man, There's not a single outward stain or speck. Would that you had given but half the care To the training of your intellect and heart, As you have given to that spotless neck!"
"Gracious Heavens!" gasped Miss Martha, who showed a modest salt-cellar in the mildest of Vs.