'True as preachin', ma'am,' I replied, adopting the drawl--'all the way
from Down East, and Union, tu, stiff as buckram.'

'Du tell!' she exclaimed, swinging my hands together as she held them in
hers. 'If I warn't hitched to this ere feller, I'd give ye a smack right
on the spot. I'm _so_ glad to see ye.'

'Do it, Sally--never mind _me_,' cried her husband, joining heartily in
the merriment.

Seizing the collar of my coat with both hands, she drew my face down
till my lips almost touched hers, (I was preparing to blush, and the
Colonel shouted, 'Come, come, I shall tell his wife,') but then, turning
quickly on her heel, she threw herself into a chair, exclaiming, 'I
wouldn't mind, but the _old man would be jealous;_' and adding to the
Colonel, 'You needn't be troubled, sir; no Yankee girl will kiss _you_
till you change your politics.'

'Give me that inducement, and I'll change them on the spot,' said the
Colonel.

'No, no, Dave, 'twouldn't do,' replied the planter, 'the conversion
wouldn't be genuwine--besides, such things arn't proper, except with
blood-relations--and all the Yankees, you know, are first-cousins.'

The conversation then subsided into a more placid mood, but lost none of
its genial good-humor. Refreshments were soon set before us, and while
partaking of them I gathered from our hostess that she was a Vermont
country-girl, who, some three years before, had been induced by liberal