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Page 13 : "Perhaps I may. I've always wanted a poodle." "I said a dog!" said the doctor, lifting his lip. "A poodle! In Hynds House! The lamented Sophronisba had a bloodhound." "The lamented Sophronisba could have what she chose. This Sophronisba prefers a poodle." "Sophronisba? What! Another one? Good God!" cried the doctor. "All right! Get a poodle. Keep the cats. Get a parrot--and an orphan with the itch--and a hyena--and a blunderbuss! Her name is Sophronisba!--I--oh, Lord, where's Jelnik? I have got to go and warn Jelnik!" And he made for the door. At that Alicia laughed. Peal upon peal, like silver bells, irrepressibly, infectiously, irresistibly, Alicia laughed. She cries with her eyes open and her mouth shut, and she laughs with her eyes shut and her mouth open. The effect is beyond all words enchanting. The doctor paused in his headlong flight. "All right: laugh!" he said, darkly.

Page 25 : These were the only pictures allowed in that room, and they gave to it an atmosphere flavored most sweetly of yesterday. Indeed, I think they must have approved of the room altogether, for we hadn't changed so much as we'd restored it. Even the glass shades that use'd to shield their wax candles were in their old places. There was their old-world atmosphere of stateliness; their Chinese jars, their English vases, their beautiful old Chelsea figures; and the sampler so painstakingly Work'd by Ann Eliza Hynds Ag'd 9 Yrs. 2 Mos., Nov'r, 1757 that had been carefully framed and mounted as a small fire-screen, perhaps for Ann Eliza's lady mama or proud grandmother. It was such human and intimate things, the mute mementoes of children who had passed, that made us begin to love Hynds House, for all its bigness and uncanniness and dilapidation. We did discover one human touch laid upon the place by Sophronisba herself.

Page 37 : The two small rooms in the rear had once been used as a jail for recalcitrant slaves; they held now nothing deadlier than Schmetz's flower pots and seedlings. Every shutter was closed, and the iron bars looked reassuringly strong; also, the walls are three feet thick. "You were dreaming, you silly women! I told you you were dreaming!" said I, and had turned to go, reassured and relieved, when Alicia's nose wrinkled. I could hardly keep from sniffing, myself. In the carriage-house was a faint, indeterminable scent, the ghost of the ghost of fragrance, so elusive that one sensed rather than smelled it, so pervasive and haunting that one could not miss it. And it certainly had nothing to do with the wholesome odor of hay and cow feed, or the smell of whitewash and oiled tools. "Yes, you were dreaming." Alicia began to edge the colored women toward the doors.

Page 49 : "There!" said The Author, confidently. "Nobody can get into that closet without first tackling me. Now you girls go to bed. To-morrow we'll tackle the unraveling." And we, remembering of a sudden that we were pig-tailed and kimonoed, and that The Author himself resembled a step-ladder with a shawl draped around it, departed hurriedly. He was late at the breakfast-table next morning. Gloom and abstraction sat visibly upon him. He left his secretary to bear the brunt of conversation with the Westmacotes and Miss Emmeline. For once he failed to do justice to Mary Magdalen's hot biscuit, and ignored Fernolia's astonished and concerned stare; even a whispered, "Honey, is you-all got a misery anywheres?" failed to rouse him. I found him, after a while, waiting for me in the library. "Miss Smith,"--The Author strode restlessly up and down--"this house has a peculiar effect upon people; a very peculiar effect. Since I came here, I have learned to walk in my sleep.

Page 61 : Nicholas Jelnik, who came and went, unruffled, aloof, with inscrutable eyes and a gently mocking smile. The Harrison-Gores came shortly after Morenas left. The Englishman was a pink-faced old gentleman in a shabby Norfolk suit and with the very thinnest legs on record--"mocking-bird legs," Fernolia called them. His daughter was a gray-eyed Minerva with the skin of a baby and the walk of a Highland piper. They found Carolina people charming, and they secured some valuable data for their book, "The Beginnings of American History." Everything in Hynds House pleased them, even The Author. Other people who do not enter into this story came and went during that winter. But they were merely millionaires--people who motored around the lovely country, ate Mary Magdalen's hot biscuit and fried chicken, slept in our four-posters, paid their stiff bills thankfully, and went about their business as good millionaires should, and generally do.

Page 73 : "On second thoughts," said The Author, critically, "I discover that I do not wholly disapprove of you. Come outside. I wish to talk about the venerable, and yet common design that tops every outside window and door of this house.--What do you call that design, may I ask?" "Why, everybody knows the Greek fret!" said Alicia, staring at it. "It's as old as the hills." "Exactly," agreed The Author. "The Greek fret is as old as the hill. And, with the single exception of the swastika, it is the design most universally known to man. You may find it on a bit of ancient Greek pottery, or on a crumbling wall in Yucatan. Many people refer to it as the Greek key." Something began to glimmer in my mind--the vaguest, most tenuous shadow of an idea; a tantalizing, hide-and-seek phantom of a thought. "Turne Hellens Keye Three Tennes and Three," he quoted the doggerel verse. We looked at him mutely.

Page 85 : Aye,--and be out of the way, lest I lead Richard Astray. Mine Uncle chid me for Ingratitude to God in that I stamp'd my foot and said No! But Richard laugh'd at the idea of Jessamine wedding yon tun. Quoth Richard, "Let Jessamine be, all of ye! she is meat for his masters." Freeman smil'd sourly, & shrug'd. I love not Freeman, nor do I hate him overmuch though he call'd me "Madame Jezebel." And then came Emily home from Visiting of her Aunts in London Town. And they made a Marriage between her and Richard, Richard that was mine. He had lov'd me an they had let us be. Once pledg'd, he had held fast to his word. Nor would I, for his own Soul's sake, have let him go. There is none, none under the sun but me alone, was strong enough to have sav'd Richard. 'T is true, as men judge such things, his Conduct to me was but Gallant Pleasantry, such as Fine Gentlemen do show to Favour'd Ladies.

Page 97 : "She went out by the back door," continued Miss Emmeline, "and I ran to the window and saw her gray-blanketed figure disappear down the lane, behind the hedge that separates Mr. Jelnik's grounds from yours. And all the Hyndses called: 'Jessamine, good-by!' But she never turned her head once, nor spoke, nor gave a sign that she heard. She just went, leaving me staring after her. I stared so hard that I woke myself up. Now, my dears, wasn't that an odd sort of dream? And so vivid, too! Why, I can hear those voices yet!" "Well, I'm glad she went," said Alicia. "Ladies that do up their heads in blankets and won't answer when they're spoken to, ought to go." Mrs. Scarboro, Judge Gatchell, and one of my old ladies were dining with us that night, for which I thanked Heaven. Judge Gatchell discovered in himself a fund of sly humor that astonished everybody, and Miss Emmeline was like a November rose, sweet with a shy and belated girlishness, rarer for a touch of frost.

Page 109 : They liked and trusted me enough now to talk about their own people before me, which is the high sign of fellowship in South Carolina. But learn, O outsider, that silence is golden, so far as you are concerned. Wisely did I hold my peace, and devoutly thank the Lord that times had changed for the better. For a great deal of that change I had to thank my dear girl, so much more clever and tactful than I. And so I would not cloud her last days with me by letting her see that I was unhappy. Only, I was glad this afternoon to be by myself for a breathing-space. It rests one's face occasionally to take off one's smile. I took off mine, then, and let down the corners of my mouth. The door leading to the hall was half open. The house was full of blue-gray shadows, and had a drowsy hush upon it, a pleasanter hush than it used to know. One heard the rushing wind outside, and above it Mary Magdalen singing one of her interminable "speretuals.