"Thank you, mamma," said Fitz, "and if you'll give me the pad and pencil
on the table I'll write to granny."

Thus compromise was met with compromise, as is right. Fitz wrote a very
short letter to granny, and drew a very long picture of crossing the
Delaware, with Nathan Hale being hanged from a gallows on the bank; and
Mrs. Williams sent Benton for clothes, and wrote out a cable to her
husband, a daily cable being the one thing that he who loved others to
have a good time was wont to exact "Dear Jim," ran the cable, at I
forget what the rates were then per word, "I wish you were here. It's
bright and beautiful; not too hot. Fitz would not get up and put on
English clothes, being too patriotic. You will run over soon if you can,
won't you, if only for a minute," etc., etc.

I know one thing of which the reader has not as yet got an inkling, The
Williamses were rich. They were rich, passing knowledge, passing belief.
Sums of which you and I dream in moments of supreme excitement would not
have paid one of Mrs. Williams's cable bills; would not have supported
Granny Williams's hot-houses and Angora cat farm through a late spring
frost. James Williams and his father before him were as magnets where
money was concerned. And it is a fact of family history that once James,
returning from a walk in the mud, found a dime sticking to the heel of
his right boot.

Fitzhugh was the heir of all this, and that was why it was necessary for
him to be superior in other ways as well. But Europeanize him as she
would, he remained the son of his fathers. French history was drummed
in through his ears by learned tutors, and could be made for the next
few days to come out of his mouth. But he absorbed American history
through the back of his head, even when there was none about to be