"Of course," echoed MONTGOMERY, with a suppressed moan. "He is our
guardian, and has trampled us into a couple of policies. We had to
yield, or excess of Boreal conversation would have made us maniacs."

"You speak bitterly for one so young," observed the Reverend OCTAVIUS
SIMPSON. "Is it derangement of the stomach, or have you known sorrow?"

"Heaps of sorrow," answered the young man. "You may be aware, sir, that
my sister and I belong to a fine old heavily mortgaged Southern
family--the PENRUTHERSES and MUNCHAUSENS of Chipmunk Court House,
Virginia, are our relatives--and that SHERMAN marched through us during
the late southward projection of certain of your Northern military
scorpions. After our father's felo-desease, ensuing remotely from an
overstrain in attempting to lift a large mortgage, our mother gave us a
step-father of Northern birth, who tried to amend our constitutions and
reconstruct us."

"Dreadful!" murmured the Gospeler.

"We hated him! MAGNOLIA threw her scissors at him several times. My
sister, sir, does not know what fear is. She would fight a lion;
inheriting the spirit from our father, who, I have heard said,
frequently fought a tiger. She can fire a gun and pick off a State
Senator as well as any man in all the South. Our mother died. A few
mornings thereafter our step-father was found dead in his bed, and the
doctors said he died of a pair of scissors which he must have swallowed
accidentally in his youth, and which were found, after his death, to
have worked themselves several inches out of his side, near the heart."

"Swallowed a pair of scissors!" exclaimed the Reverend OCTAVIUS.