Part 41

"That is your family coat-of-arms, Mrs. Brown, is it not?" I asked, throwing wide the door for the return of the noble dead.

"Yes," she answered proudly, "that is my one, and that one there is Mr. Brown's, and those other two are the children's; the yellow one is Victoria's and the red one is Louisa Alexandra's. Mr. Brown bought them in New York, and we thought when we were getting them we might just as well get one apiece for the children too."

How rich and reckless, I reflected, is the spendthrift generosity of our new world rich!

I could not but recall how those mean old English families make one such emblem do for centuries, and the children have to be content with its rusty symbols. But this lavish enterprise cheered me by its refreshing contrast; for every one was new, and each child had one for its very own.

There is no need to dwell on the succeeding Sabbath. St. Andrew's church bore everywhere the evidences of wealth and refinement. Large and sympathetic congregations were before me, evidently hospitable to the truth; for Huguenot and Scotch-Irish blood does not lose its ruling passion, and South Carolina has its generous portion of them both.

I sorely missed the psalms, without which, to those who have acquired the stern relish, a service lacks its greatest tonic. But my poor efforts seemed well received and the flood of Southern fervour burst forth later on, as we sat around the Vardells' dinner table.

I was being initiated into the mystic sweets of "syllabub," a Southern concoction of which my sober Scotch folks had never heard. Whoso takes it may not look upon the wine when it is red, for its glow is muffled by various other moral things; but the wine, waiting patiently at the bottom, cometh at last unto its own; and the glow which was absent from the cup may be soon detected upon the face of him who took it, beguiled by the innocent foliage amidst which the historic serpent lurks.

Webster defines it as a dish of cream, flavoured with wine, and beaten to a froth. But Webster was from Massachusetts and his advantages were few. The cultured Southerner, more versed in luxury than language, knoweth well that it is a dish of wine, flavoured with cream, and not beaten at all since the foundation of the world.

Southerners incline to eulogy; and syllabubs insist upon it. Wherefore, after the third syllabub had run the same course that its fathers had run, Miss Sadie turned to me and said:

"That was a perfectly lovely sermon you preached to us this morning."

"You are very frank," quoth I, for I was unaccustomed to compliments, one every six or seven years, and an extra thrown in at death, being the limit of Scotch enthusiasm.

"Well," replied Miss Sadie, "I hope I am. I think it is sweet and lovely to tell people if you like them. What's the use of waiting till they're dead, before you say nice things about your friends? If folks love me, or think me nice, I want them to tell me so while I'm alive."

"I love you and I think you are sweet and beautiful," said I, obedient.

Then came a dainty Southern cry--not the bold squeal of other girls, nor the loud honking of those who mourn for girlhood gone--but the woman-note which only the Southern girl commands in its perfection.

"Father! Do you hear what that preacher said to me just now?" she cried archly. "Isn't it perfectly dreadful for him to say things like that to a simple maiden like me? You awful man!"

"Our guest is only flesh and blood, Sadie," answered the courtly father when his laughing ceased, "so I presume, like the rest of us, he thinks you lovely. As for his telling you so, he was only carrying out your own instructions."

"I don't see how you could have done anything else," laughed Mrs. Vardell. "You shut him up to it, you know, Sadie. After your precept, to have said nothing nice would have meant that there was nothing nice to say."

"But seriously," resumed Miss Sadie, turning again to me, "that was really a lovely sermon this morning. It is beautiful to be able to help a whole congregation like that."

"Yes," chimed in Miss Vardell, Sadie's sweet senior, "it was perfectly fascinating. I shall never forget it as long as I live."

"I really think you will have to let us speak our mind," added their mother. "Your Geneva gown was so becoming; I do so wish our Southern ministers would adopt it. And the sermon was perfect. I especially admired the way it seemed to grow out of the text; they seemed to grow together like a vine twining around a tree."

I endured this tender pelting with the best grace I could command, though this was the first time I had ever been the centre of such a hosannah thunder-storm. The tribute to the kinship of text and sermon, however, was really very pleasing to me. Just at this juncture, when a new batch of compliments was about to be produced, smoking hot, an aged aunt, the prisoner of years, ventured an enquiry.

"I wish I could have been there--but I am far past that," she said. "What was the text, Sadie?"

Sadie flew into the chamber of her memory to catch it before it should escape. But the sudden invasion had evidently alarmed it, for it had gone. She silently pursued it into space, but returned empty-handed.

"That's strange," she faltered; "it was a lovely text," she added, by way of consolation. "But it's gone; I was so taken up with the sermon that I must have failed to remember the text," she concluded, false to her first love, but faithful to her guest.

"Well, Josie," said the still unenlightened aunt, "I will have to look to you. You will tell me what it was."

Josie joined in the chase, but their prey had had a noble start and was now far beyond them.

"It was in the New Testament, I think," said Josie, pleased with this pledge of accuracy, and satisfied that she had outrun her sister--"and it was tolerably long." This was said with the air of one who had almost identified it and might justly leave the rest to the imagination. "I reckon I could find it if I had a Bible," she added hopefully.

No Bible was produced, for that would have been taking an unfair advantage of the fugitive; but the eulogists began their mental search in unison, quoting various fragments of my morning prayer at family worship, which they carefully retained as witnesses. After they had ransacked every mental corridor in vain they acknowledged the fruitlessness of the quest, and I myself told their aged relative the text.