doesn't think me worth talking to seriously.



VII


July has dragged like a log across a wet field.

There was the Fourth, which is always the grandest occasion of the
year with us. Society has taken up Sylvia and rejected Georgiana;
and so with its great gallantry, and to her boundless delight,
Sylvia was invited to sit with a bevy of girls in a large furniture
wagon covered with flags and bunting. The girls were to be dressed
in white, carry flowers and flags, and sing "The Star-spangled
Banner" in the procession, just before the fire-engine. I wrote a
note to Georgiana, asking whether it would interfere with Sylvia's
Greatest Common Divisor if I presented her with a profusion of
elegant flowers on that occasion. Georgiana herself had equipped
Sylvia with a truly exquisite silken flag on a silver staff; and
as Sylvia both sang and waved with all her might, not only to keep
up the Green River reputation in such matters, but with a mediaeval
determination to attract a young man on the fire-engine behind,
she quite eclipsed every other miss in the wagon, and was not even
hoarse when persuaded at last to stop. So that several of the
representatives of the other States voted afterwards in a special
congress that she was loud, and in no way as nice as they had
fancied, and that they ought never to recognize her again except
in church and a funerals.