remainder of her days. That was twenty years ago, and she still slept in
the best chamber, and still ordered tea and toast at the table. She had
grown sourer with years and more eccentric with authority, but the
general never failed to treat her crotchets with courtesy or to open the
door for her when she came and went. To the mild complaints of Miss
Chris and the protestations of Eugenia he returned the invariable
warning: "She is our guest--remember what is due to a guest, my dears."

And when Miss Chris placidly suggested that the privileges of guestship
wore threadbare when they were stretched over twenty years, and Eugenia
fervently hoped that there were no visitors in heaven, the general
responded to each in turn:

"It is the right of a guest to determine the length of his stay, and, as
a Virginian, my house is open as long as it has a roof over it."

So Aunt Griselda drank her green tea in acrid silence, turning at
intervals to reprove Bernard for taking too large mouthfuls or to
request Eugenia to remove her elbows from the table.

To-day, when Eugenia descended, she was gazing stonily into Miss
Chris's genial face, and listening constrainedly to a story at which the
general was laughing heartily.

"Yes, I never look at these forks of the bead pattern that I don't see
Aunt Callowell," Miss Chris was concluding. "She never used any other
pattern, and I remember when Cousin Bob Baker once sent her a set of
teaspoons with a different border, she returned them to Richmond to be
exchanged. Do you remember the time she came to mother's when we were
children, Tom? Eugie, will you have breast or leg?"