"Why not, if I live among you?"
"If you live here--take on our ways, our beliefs, our mode of thinking,
you may, in a score of years, grow like us, outwardly; but, inwardly,
where the true like must start, _never_!"
"How do we differ?"
"Ask me something easier! You've been bred differently, used to
different things, to doing them in a different way. We do things
slowly, leisurely, with a fine disregard of time, you, with the modern
rush, and bustle, and hurry. You are a man of the world--I repeat
it--up to the minute in everything--never lagging behind, unless you
wish. You never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day. We never
do anything to-day that can be put off till to-morrow."
"And which do you prefer, the to-day or the to-morrow?" he asked.
"It depends on my humor, and my location, at the time--though, I must
admit, the to-day makes for thrift, and business, and success in
acquiring wealth."
"And success also in getting rid of it. It is a return toward the
primitive condition--the survival of the fittest. There must be losers
as well as acquirers."
"There's the pity of it!" she exclaimed, "that one must lose in order
that another may gain."
"But as we are not in Utopia or Altruria," he smiled, "it will continue
so to be. Why, even in Baltimore, they----"
"Oh, Baltimore is only an overgrown country town!" she exclaimed.
"Granted!" he replied. "With half a million population, it is as
provincial as Hampton, and thanks God for it--the most smug,
self-satisfied, self-sufficient municipality in the land, with its
cobblestones, its drains-in-the-gutters, its how much-holier-than-thou
air about everything."
"But it has excellent railway facilities!" she laughed.
"Because it happens to be on the main line between Washington and the
North."
"At least, the people are nice, barring a few mushrooms who are making
a great to-do."
"Yes, the people _are_ delightful!--And, when it comes to mushrooms,
Northumberland has Baltimore beaten to a frazzle. We raise a fresh crop
every night."
"Northumberland society must be exceedingly large!" she laughed.
"It is--but it's not overcrowded. About as many die every day, as are
born every night; and, at any rate, they don't interfere with those who
really belong--except to increase prices, and the cost of living, and
clog the avenue with automobiles."
"That is progress!"
"Yes, it's progress! but whither it leads no one knows--to the devil,
likely--or a lemon garden."
"'Blessed are the lemons on earth, for they shall be peaches in
Heaven!'" she quoted.
"What a glorious peach your Miss Erskine will be," he replied.
"I'm afraid you don't appreciate the great honor the lady did you, in
condescending to view the _treasures_ of Clarendon, and to talk about
them afterward. To hear her, she is the most intimate friend you have
in Hampton."
"Good!" he said, "I'm glad you told me. Somehow, I'm always drawing
lemons."
"Am I a lemon?" she asked, abruptly.
"You! do you think you are?"
"One can never know."
"Have I drawn _you_?" he inquired.
"Quite immaterial to the question, which is: A lemon or not a lemon?"
"If you could but see yourself at this moment, you would not ask," he
said, looking at her with amused scrutiny.
The lovely face, the blue black hair, the fine figure in the simple
pink organdie, the slender ankles, the well-shod feet--a lemon!
"But as I can't see myself, and have no mirror handy, your testimony is
desired," she insisted. "A lemon or not a lemon?"
"A lemon!" he answered.
"Then you can't have any objection----"
"If you bring Miss Erskine in?" he interrupted. "Nay! Nay! _Nay!_ NAY!"
"----if I take you there for a game of Bridge--shall we go this very
evening?"
"If you wish," he answered.
She laughed. "I don't wish--and we are growing very silly. Come, tell
about your Annapolis trip. You stayed a great while."
"Something more than three weeks!"
"It's a queer old town, Annapolis--they call it the 'Finished City!'
It's got plenty of landmarks, and relics, but nothing more. If it were
not for the State Capitol and Naval Academy, it would be only a lot of
ruins, lost in the sand. In midsummer, it's absolutely dead. No one on
the streets, no one in the shops, no one any place.--Deserted--until
there's a fire. Then you should see them come out!"
"That is sufficiently expressed!" laughed Croyden. "But, with the
autumn and the Academy in session, the town seemed very much alive. We
sampled 'Cheney's Best,' Wegard's Cakes, and saw the Custard-and-Cream
Chapel."
"You've been to Annapolis, sure!" she replied. "There's only one thing
more--did you see Paul Jones?"