should a long nose run through a family like that, or a bad temper, or the colour of hair? I don’t know. The world’s a puzzle and the older one grows, the more it puzzles one.”

109

After dinner, Miss Pinckney ordered Phyl to put on her hat and they started out for a drive.

Every day at five o’clock, weather permitting, Miss Pinckney took an airing. She was one of the sights of Charleston, she, and the dark chestnut horses driven by Abraham the coloured coachman, and the barouche in which she drove; a carriage of other times, one of those deathless conveyances turned out in Long Acre in the days when varnish was varnish and hand labour had not been ousted by machinery. It was painted in a basket-work pattern, the pattern peculiar to the English Royal carriages, and the whole turn-out had an excellence and a style of its own—a thing unpurchasable as yesterday.

They drove in the direction of the Battery and here they drew up to look at the view. On one side of them stood the great curving row of mansions facing the sea, old Georgian houses and houses more modern, yet without offence, set in gardens 110 where the palmetto leaves shivered in the sea wind and the pink mimosa mixed its perfume with the salt-scented air. On the other side lay the sea. Afternoon, late afternoon, is the time of all times to visit this spacious and sunlit place. It is then that the old ghosts return, if ever they return, to discuss the news brought by the last packet from England, the doings of Mr. Pitt, the Paris fashions.

110

Looking seaward they would see no change in the changeless sea and little change in the city if they turned their eyes that way.

Miss Pinckney got out and they walked a bit, inspecting the guns, each with its brass plate and its story.

Far away in the haze stood Fort Sumter,—a fragment of history, a sea warrior of the past, voiceless and guarding forever the viewless. It may have been some recollection of the Brighton front and of the great harbour of Kingstown with the sun upon it, and all this seemed vaguely familiar to Phyl, pleasantly familiar and homely. She breathed the sea air deeply and then, as she turned, glancing towards the land, a recollection came to her of the story she had been reading that evening in the library at Kilgobbin—“The Gold Bug.” It was near here that Legrand had found the treasure. He had come to Charleston to buy the mattocks and picks—no, it was Jupp the negro who had come to buy them.

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