friendship.

"I didn't know you were going to-morrow."

"Neither did I till this morning, but I am bored to death, Georgie."

She did not look it. She was long-limbed, slender, with heavy
burned-gold hair, a skin which was pale gold after a July by the sea.
The mauve of her dress and hat emphasized the gold of hair and skin.
Some one had said that Madge MacVeigh at the end of a summer gave the
effect of a statue cast in new bronze. Dalton in the early days of their
friendship had called her his "Golden Girl." The name had stuck to her.
She had laughed at it but had liked it. "I should hate it," she had
said, "if I were rich. Perhaps some day some millionaire will turn me
into gold and make it true."

"Just because you are bored to death," Dalton told her, "is no reason
why you should accuse me of it."

"It isn't accusation. It's condolence. I am sorry for both of us,
George, that we can't sit there under the trees and eat out of a basket
and have spiders and ants in things and not mind it. Here we are in the
land of Smithfield hams and spoon-bread and we ate canned lobster for
lunch, and alligator pear salad."

"Baked ham and spoon-bread--for our sins?"

"It is because you and I have missed the baked ham and spoon-bread
atmosphere, that we are bored to death, Georgie. Everything in our lives
is the same wherever we go. When we are in Virginia we ought to do as