domestic delicacies,--the preserving of fruits, the making of pickles
as practiced on the plantations by the old Virginia cooks,--the colonel
waxing eloquent over each production, and the future wine merchant
becoming more and more enchanted as the colonel flowed on.

When he rose to go the grocer had a mental list of the things he would
send the colonel in the morning all arranged in his commercial head,
and so great was his delight that, after shaking hands with me once
and with the colonel three times, he would also have extended that
courtesy to Chad had not that perfectly trained servant checkmated him
by filling his extended palm with the rim of his own hat.

[Illustration]

When Chad returned from bowing him through the tunnel, the lines in
his face a tangle of emotions, the colonel was standing on the mat,
in his favorite attitude--back to the fire, coat thrown open, thumbs
in his armholes, his outstretched fingers beating woodpecker tattoos
on his vest.

Somehow the visit of the grocer had lifted him out of the cares of the
day. How, he could not tell. Perhaps it was the fragrance of the
Madeira; perhaps the respectful, overawed bow,--the bow of the tradesman
the world over to the landed proprietor,--restoring to him for one
brief moment that old feudal supremacy which above all else his soul
loved. Perhaps it was only the warmth and cheer and comfort of it all.

Whatever it was, it buoyed and strengthened him. He was again in the
old dining-hall at home: the servants moving noiselessly about; the
cut-glass decanters reflected in the polished mahogany; the candles