live in, ain't that so, mum?" Then, as the severe matron still
stared unbendingly before her, he descended between the wheels,
and stood nervously scraping his feet in the long grass by the
roadside.

"This here's Sol Peterkin, Mr. Carraway," said the driver, bowing
his introduction as he leaned forward to disentangle the reins
from the sorrel's tail, "an' I reckon he kin pint out Blake Hall
to you as well as another, seem' as he was under-overseer thar
for eighteen years befo' the war. Now you'd better climb in agin,
folks; it's time we were off."

He gave an insinuating cluck to the horses, while several
passengers, who had alighted to gather blackberries from the
ditch, scrambled hurriedly into their places. With a single
clanking wrench the stage toiled on, plodding clumsily over the
miry road.

As the spattering mud-drops fell round him, Carraway lifted his
head and sniffed the air like a pointer that has been just turned
afield. For the moment his professional errand escaped him as his
chest expanded in the light wind which blew over the radiant
stillness of the Virginian June. From the cloudless sky to its
pure reflection in the rain-washed roads there was barely a
descending shade, and the tufts of dandelion blooming against the
rotting rail fence seemed but patches of the clearer sunshine.

"Bless my soul, it's like a day out of Scripture!" he exclaimed
in a tone that was half-apologetic; then raising his
walking-stick he leisurely swept it into space. "There's hardly