before he got quite to my gate.

"Not if he can help it," he answered as he came close and leaned against
one of the tall stone posts, so that his grandly shaped head with its
ante-bellum squirls of hair was silhouetted against the white-starred
wistaria vine in a way that made me frantic for several buckets of
monochrome water-colors and a couple of brushes as big as those used for
white-washing. In about ten great splotches I could have done a
masterpiece of him that would have drawn artistic fits from the public
of gay Paris. I never see him that I don't long for a box of pastels or
get the ghost of the odor of oil-paint in my nose.

"The whole thing will be settled in a month," he continued, with a sigh
that had a hint of depression in it and an astral shape of Sallie
manifested itself hanging on his shoulder. However, I controlled myself
and listened to him. "There is to be a meeting of the directors of both
roads over in Bolivar in a few weeks and they are to come to some
understanding. The line across the river is unquestionably the cheapest
and best grade and there is no chance of getting them to run along our
bluff--unless we can show them some advantage in doing so, and I can't
see what that will be."

"What makes it of advantage for a railroad to run through any given
point in a rural community like this, Cousin James?" I asked, with a
glow of intellect mounting to my head, the like of which I hadn't felt
since I delivered my Junior thesis in Political Economy with Jane
looking on, consumed with pride.

"Towns that have good stock or grain districts around them with good
roads for hauling do what is called 'feeding' a railroad," he answered.