Even at the tune I was not sure I liked his agreeable voice: it had a
self-importance out of keeping with the humdrum nature of his story, as
though a breeze engaged in shaking out a table-cloth should have fancied
itself inflating a banner. But this criticism may have been a mere mark of
my own fastidiousness, for the man seemed a simple fellow, satisfied with
his middling fortunes, and already (he was not much past thirty) deep-sunk
in conjugal content.

He had just started on an anecdote connected with the cutting of his
eldest boy's teeth, when a lady I knew, returning from her late drive,
paused before us for a moment in the twilight, with the smile which is the
feminine equivalent of beads to savages.

"Won't you take a ticket?" she said sweetly.

Of course I would take a ticket--but for what? I ventured to inquire.

"Oh, that's _so_ good of you--for the lecture this evening. You needn't
go, you know; we're none of us going; most of us have been through it
already at Aiken and at Saint Augustine and at Palm Beach. I've given away
my tickets to some new people who've just come from the North, and some of
us are going to send our maids, just to fill up the room."

"And may I ask to whom you are going to pay this delicate attention?"

"Oh, I thought you knew--to poor Mrs. Amyot. She's been lecturing all over
the South this winter; she's simply _haunted_ me ever since I left New
York--and we had six weeks of her at Bar Harbor last summer! One has to
take tickets, you know, because she's a widow and does it for her son--to
pay for his education. She's so plucky and nice about it, and talks about