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The Major stroked his well-filled velvet vest caressingly, as if he already felt the pangs of the approaching separation.

“Oh, dear! You amaze me,” began Miss Jemima.

“Yes, madam, I should be amazed myself, except that I have stood it so long. Why, I had once an affair with an intimate and valued friend, Judge Carrington. You may have heard of him, a very distinguished man! and I was indiscreet enough to carry that rascal George Washington to the field, thinking, of course, that I ought to go like a gentleman, and although the affair was arranged after we had taken our positions, and I did not have the pleasure of shooting at him.

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Miss Jemima. “The pleasure of shooting at your friend! Monstrous!”

“I say I did not have that pleasure,” corrected the Major, blandly; “the affair was, as I stated, arranged without a shot; yet do you know? that rascal George Washington will not allow that it was so, and I understand he recounts with the most harrowing details the manner in which ‘he and I,’ as he terms it, shot my friend–murdered him.”

Miss Jemima gave an “Ugh. Horrible! What depravity!” she said, almost under her breath.

The Major caught the words.

“Yes, madam, it is horrible to think of such depravity. Unquestionably he deserves death; but what can one do! The law, kept feeble by politicians, does not permit one to kill them, however worthless they are (he observed Miss Jemima’s start,)–except, of course, by way of example, under certain peculiar circumstances, as I have stated to you.” He bowed blandly.

Miss Jemima was speechless, so he pursued.

“I have sometimes been tempted to make a break for liberty, and have thought that if I could once get the rascal on the field, with my old pistols, I would settle with him which of us is the master.”

“Do you mean that you would–would shoot him?” gasped Miss Jemima.

“Yes, madam, unless he should be too quick for me,” replied the Major, blandly,–“or should order me from the field, which he probably would do.”

The old lady turned and hastily left the room.

III.

Though Miss Jemima after this regarded the Major with renewed suspicion, and confided to her niece that she did not feel at all safe with him, the old gentleman was soon on the same terms with Rose that he was on with Margaret herself. He informed her that he was just twenty-five his “last grass,” and that he never could, would, or should grow a year older. He notified Jeff and his friend Mr. Lawrence at the table that he regarded himself as a candidate for Miss Endicott’s hand, and had “staked” the ground, and he informed her that as soon as he could bring himself to break an oath which he had made twenty years before, never to address another woman, he intended to propose to her. Rose, who had lingered at the table a moment behind the other ladies, assured the old fellow that he need fear no rival, and that if he could not muster courage to propose before she left, as it was leap-year, she would exercise her prerogative and propose herself. The Major, with his hand on his heart as he held the door open for her, vowed as Rose swept past him her fine eyes dancing, and her face dimpling with fun, that he was ready that moment to throw himself at her feet if it were not for the difficulty of getting up from his knees.

A little later in the afternoon Margaret was down among the rose-bushes, where Lawrence had joined her, after Rose had executed that inexplicable feminine manoeuvre of denying herself to oppose a lover’s request.

Jeff was leaning against a pillar, pretending to talk to Rose, but listening more to the snatches of song in Margaret’s rich voice, or to the laughter which floated up to them from the garden below.

Suddenly he said abruptly, “I believe that fellow Lawrence is in love with Margaret.”