第78章 PART THIRD(9)

"Well,if you'll be raght good I'll let yo'give me some professional advass about putting something in the co'ners or not,when you have seen it on the table."She rose and led the way into the other room.Beaton knew she wanted to talk with him about something else;but he waited patiently to let her play her comedy out.She spread the cover on the table,and he advised her,as he saw she wished,against putting anything in the corners;just run a line of her stitch around the edge,he said.

"Mr.Fulkerson and Ah,why,we've been having a regular faght aboat it,"she commented."But we both agreed,fahnally,to leave it to you;Mr.

Fulkerson said you'd be sure to be raght.Ah'm so glad you took mah sahde.But he's a great admahrer of yours,Mr.Beaton,"she concluded,demurely,suggestively.

"Is he?Well,I'm a great admirer of Fulkerson,"said Beaton,with a capricious willingness to humor her wish to talk about Fulkerson.

"He's a capital fellow;generous,magnanimous,with quite an ideal of friendship and an eye single to the main chance all the time.He would advertise 'Every Other Week'on his family vault."Miss Woodburn laughed,and said she should tell him what Beaton had said.

"Do.But he's used to defamation from me,and he'll think you're joking.""Ah suppose,"said Miss Woodburn,"that he's quahte the tahpe of a New York business man."She added,as if it followed logically,"He's so different from what I thought a New York business man would be.""It's your Virginia tradition to despise business,"said Beaton,rudely.

Miss Woodburn laughed again."Despahse it?Mah goodness!we want to get into it and woak it fo'all it's wo'th,'as Mr.Fulkerson says.That tradition is all past.You don't know what the Soath is now.Ah suppose mah fathaw despahses business,but he's a tradition himself,as Ah tell him."Beaton would have enjoyed joining the young lady in anything she might be going to say in derogation of her father,but he restrained himself,and she went on more and more as if she wished to account for her father's habitual hauteur with Beaton,if not to excuse it."Ah tell him he don't understand the rising generation.He was brought up in the old school,and he thinks we're all just lahke he was when he was young,with all those ahdeals of chivalry and family;but,mah goodness!it's money that cyoants no'adays in the Soath,just lahke it does everywhere else.Ah suppose,if we could have slavery back in the fawm mah fathaw thinks it could have been brought up to,when the commercial spirit wouldn't let it alone,it would be the best thing;but we can't have it back,and Ah tell him we had better have the commercial spirit as the next best thing."Miss Woodburn went on,with sufficient loyalty and piety,to expose the difference of her own and her father's ideals,but with what Beaton thought less reference to his own unsympathetic attention than to a knowledge finally of the personnel and materiel of 'Every Other Week.'and Mr.Fulkerson's relation to the enterprise."You most excuse my asking so many questions,Mr.Beaton.You know it's all mah doing that we awe heah in New York.Ah just told mah fathaw that if he was evah goin'to do anything with his wrahtings,he had got to come No'th,and Ah made him come.Ah believe he'd have stayed in the Soath all his lahfe.

And now Mr.Fulkerson wants him to let his editor see some of his wrahtings,and Ah wanted to know something aboat the magazine.We awe a great deal excited aboat it in this hoase,you know,Mr.Beaton,"she concluded,with a look that now transferred the interest from Fulkerson to Alma.She led the way back to the room where they were sitting,and went up to triumph over Fulkerson with Beaton's decision about the table-cover.

Alma was left with Beaton near the piano,and he began to talk about the Dryfooses as he sat down on the piano-stool.He said he had been giving Miss Dryfoos a lesson on the banjo;he had borrowed the banjo of Miss Vance.Then he struck the chord he had been trying to teach Christine,and played over the air he had sung.

"How do you like that?"he asked,whirling round.

"It seems rather a disrespectful little tune,somehow,"said Alma,placidly.

Beaton rested his elbow on the corner of the piano and gazed dreamily at her."Your perceptions are wonderful.It is disrespectful.I played it,up there,because I felt disrespectful to them.""Do you claim that as a merit?"

"No,I state it as a fact.How can you respect such people?""You might respect yourself,then,"said the girl."Or perhaps that wouldn't be so easy,either.""No,it wouldn't.I like to have you say these things to me,"said Beaton,impartially.

"Well,I like to say them,"Alma returned.

"They do me good."