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“Our home, sir,” said Colonel Blaylock, removing his wide-brimmed, rather shapeless black felt hat, “is in Holly Springs–Holly Springs, Georgia. I am very proud to make your acquaintance, Mr. Bloom. Mrs. Blaylock and myself have just arrived in Okochee this morning, sir, on business–business of importance in connection with the recent rapid march of progress in this section of our state.”

The Colonel smoothed back, with a sweeping gesture, his long, smooth, locks. His dark eyes, still fiery under the heavy black brows, seemed inappropriate to the face of a business man. He looked rather to be an old courtier handed down from the reign of Charles, and re-attired in a modern suit of fine, but raveling and seam-worn, broadcloth.

“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Bloom, in his heartiest prospectus voice, “things have been whizzing around Okochee. Biggest industrial revival and waking up to natural resources Georgia ever had. Did you happen to squeeze in on the ground floor in any of the gilt- edged grafts, Colonel?”

“Well, sir,” said the Colonel, hesitating in courteous doubt, “if I understand your question, I may say that I took the opportunity to make an investment that I believe will prove quite advantageous–yes, sir, I believe it will result in both pecuniary profit and agreeable occupation.”

“Colonel Blaylock,” said the little edlerly lady, shaking her gray curl and smiling indulgent explanation at J. Pinkney Bloom, “is so devoted to businesss. He has such a talent for financiering and markets and investments and those kind of things. I think myself extremely fortunate in having secured him for a partner on life’s journey–I am so unversed in those formidable but very useful branches of learning.”

Colonel Blaylock rose and made a bow–a bow that belonged with silk stockings and lace ruffles and velvet.

“Practical affairs,” he said, with a wave of his hand toward the promoter, “are, if I may use the comparison, the garden walks upon which we tread through life, viewing upon either side of us the flowers which brighten that journey. It is my pleasure to be able to lay out a walk or two. Mrs. Blaylock, sir, is one of those fortunate higher spirits whose mission it is to make the flowers grow. Perhaps, Mr. Bloom, you have perused the lines of Lorella, the Southern poetess. That is the name above which Mrs. Blaylock has contributed to the press of the South for many years.”

“Unfortunately,” said Mr. Bloom, with a sense of the loss clearly written upon his frank face, “I’m like the Colonel–in the walk-making business myself–and I haven’t had time to even take a sniff at the flowers. Poetry is a line I never dealt in. It must be nice, though –quite nice.”

“It is the region,” smiled Mrs. Blaylock, “in which my soul dwells. My shawl, Peyton, if you please–the breeze comes a little chilly from yon verdured hills.”

The Colonel drew from the tail pocket of his coat a small shawl of knitted silk and laid it solicitously about the shoulders of the lady. Mrs. Blaylock sighed contentedly, and turned her expressive eyes– still as clear and unworldly as a child’s–upon the steep slopes that were slowly slipping past. Very fair and stately they looked in the clear morning air. They seemed to speak in familiar terms to the responsive spirit of Lorella. “My native hills!” she murmured, dreamily. “See how the foliage drinks the sunlight from the hollows and dells.”

“Mrs. Blaylock’s maiden days,” said the Colonel, interpreting her mood to J. Pinkney Bloom, “were spent among the mountains of northern Georgia. Mountain air and mountain scenery recall to her those days. Holly Springs, where we have lived for twenty years, is low and flat. I fear that she may have suffered in health and spirits by so long a residence there. That is one portent reason for the change we are making. My dear, can you not recall those lines you wrote–entitled, I think, ‘The Georgia Hills’–the poem that was so extensively copied by the Southern press and praised so highly by the Atlanta critics?”