"Johnson," The Author was saying as I passed, my slippered feet making no sound, "Johnson, that Sophy woman intrigues me. Hanged if she doesn't, Johnson!"
"I like Miss Smith, myself. She reminds me very much of my mother," said Johnson's cordial voice in reply.
"But I don't like the way things look here, at all, Johnson!" fumed The Author. "What's his game, anyhow? What's he after? What's he here for? Does she know, or suspect? Or doesn't she, Johnson?" The Author asked, earnestly. "Look here: somebody's got to protect that Sophy woman against Nicholas Jelnik!"
Just before he went back North, Luis Morenas good-naturedly agreed to exhibit his new sketches for the delectation of such folk as we cared to ask to view them--this to please Alicia, whom he called Flower o' the Peach.
Now an exhibit of Morenas sketches would have been an art event in the Biggest City itself. But think of it in Hyndsville, where few worth-while things ever happened; and imagine the polite wire-pulling for invitations that ensued!
It wasn't my fault that I couldn't ask the whole town to come to my house to see those brilliant sketches. I would have done so with all my heart, but there was a section of Hyndsville I couldn't reach. It was locked up behind bars of pride and prejudice of its own building; and losing by it, of course, since one can't be exclusive without at the same time being excluded. To shut other folks out you have first got to shut yourself in.
For instance, figure to yourself Miss Martha Hopkins. She had visited as far north as Atlanta; and she had relatives in Charleston, as she would have condescendingly informed arch-angels, principalities, powers, thrones, and dominions. But she wasn't blessed with much of this world's goods, and most of the time she stayed home and improved her mind. She took herself with profound seriousness. She seemed to think that the better part of wisdom consists in knowing who said this and who didn't say that--"as Mr. Arnold Bennett expresses it," "as Mr. H.G. Wells remarks," "as Mr. James Huneker writes,"--she was the only person in all Hyndsville who could write up music and art, and she wasn't even afraid to use the word _sex_ in its most modern acceptance; though in South Carolina you refer to the ladies as "the fair sex" if you're a gentleman, and to the gentlemen as "the stronger sex" if you're a lady. You understand that "male and female created He them," and you let it go at that. Miss Martha Hopkins, then, was daring; she was also exclusive.