"Major," she answered as her slender fingers opened and closed a book on
the table near her, "did you realize that two months have passed since I
came to--to--"
"Came _home_, child," prompted the major as he touched lightly the
restless hand near his own.
"I am beginning to feel as if it might be that, and yet I don't know--not
until I talk to you about it all. Everybody has been good to me. I feel
that they really care and I love it--and them all! But, Major, did
you--know--my father--well?"
"Yes, my dear." He answered, looking her straight in the eyes, "I knew
Peters Brown and had pleasantly hostile relations with him always."
"This memorandum--I got it together before I came down here, while I was
settling up his estate. It is the list of the investments he made while
in the South for the twenty years after the war. I want to talk them over
with you." She looked at the major squarely and determinedly.
"Fire away," he answered with courage in his voice that belied the
feeling beneath it.
"I see that in eighteen seventy-nine he bought lumber lands from Hayes
Donelson. The price seems to have been practically nominal in view of
what he sold a part of them for three years later. Was Hayes Donelson
Phoebe's father? I want to know all about him."
"My dear, you are giving a large order for ancient history--Captain
Donelson couldn't fill it himself if he were alive. Those lumber lands
were just a stick or two that he threw on the grand bonfire. He sold
everything he had and instituted and ran the most inflammatory newspaper
in the South. He gloried in an attitude of non-reconstruction and died
when Phoebe was a year old. Her mother raised Phoebe by keeping boarders,
but failed to raise the mortgage on the family home. She died trying and
Phoebe has kept her own sleek little head above water since her sixteenth
year by reporting and editing Dimity Doings on the paper her father
founded. I think she has learned a pretty good swimming stroke by this
time. It is still a measure ahead of that of David Kildare and--"
"Oh, you _must_ help me make her take what would have been a fair price
for those lands, Major. I'm determined--I--I--" Caroline's voice faltered
but her head was well up. "I'm determined; but we'll talk of that later.
He bought the Cantrell land and divided it up into the first improved
city addition. Was it, was it 'carpetbagging'?" She flushed as she said
the word--"Was it pressure? Were the Cantrells in need?"
"Not for long, my dear, not for long! Mrs. Tom took that money and bought
cows for the east farm, ran a dairy in opposition to Matilda's and then
got her into a combine to ship gilt-edge to Cincinnati. I expected them
to skim the milky way any night and put a star brand of butter on the
market. They made a great deal of money and were proportionately hard to
manage. Young Tom inherits from his mother and makes paying combines in
stocks. Old Tom hasn't a thing to do but sit in the sun and spin tales
about battles he was and was not in. It wouldn't do to drag up that
pinched period of his life; he is too expansive now to be made to recall
it." The major smiled invitingly as if he had hopes of an interested
question that would turn the trend of the conversation, but Caroline
Darrah held herself sternly to the matter in hand.