last one was seen in the Chesapeake in sixty-nine. Mine was killed and
stuffed in the forties. He is in a perfect state of preservation, and
in the original glass case."

"I'd like to come," George told him. "Could I--to-night? I don't know
just how long I shall be staying down."

"Any time--any time. To-night, of course. There's nothing I like
better than to talk about my birds, unless it is to eat them. Isn't
that so, Claudia?"

"Yes, Father." Mrs. Beaufort was studying Dalton closely. His manner
was perfect. It was, indeed, she decided, too perfect. "He is
thinking too much of the way he does it." The one sin in Aunt
Claudia's mind was social self-consciousness. People who thought all
of the time about manners hadn't been brought up to them. They must
have them without thinking. George was not, she decided, a gentleman
in the Old Dominion sense. Dalton would have been amazed could he have
looked into Aunt Claudia's mind and have seen himself a--Publican.

"Father," she said, after Dalton had left them, "did I hear you invite
him to dinner?"

"Yes, my dear, but he could not come----"

"I'm glad he couldn't."

"Why?"

"I'm not sure that he's--our kind----"