in alighting from the high-hung carriages.
{95}
As soon as the service was over the social clearing-house held its session. It was not known by that name, but that in fact was what it amounted to. Every young woman present invited every other young woman present to go home with her to dinner and to stay for a few days or for a week. There was a babel of insistent tongues out of which nothing less sagacious than feminine intelligence could have extracted a resultant understanding. But after a few minutes all was as orderly as the domestic arrangements over which these young women were accustomed to preside. Two or three of them had won all the others to their will, and the company, including all there was of young and rich voiced femininity in the region round about, was divided into squads and assigned to two or three hospitable mansions, whither trunks would follow in the early morning of the Monday.
The young men accommodated themselves at once to these arrangements, each accepting at least a dinner invitation to the house, to which the young woman most attractive to himself{96} had elected to go. As there was no afternoon or evening service, the religious duties of the day were at an end before one of the clock.
{96}
Out under the trees before and during the service the men discussed affairs of interest to themselves, and on this his first Sunday, Arthur found that his own affairs constituted the subject of most general interest. He was heartily welcomed as the new master of Wyanoke, the welcome partaking somewhat of the nature of that given to one who returns to right ways of living after erratic wanderings. There was a kindly disposition to recognize Arthur’s birthright as a Virginian, together with a generous readiness to forgive his youthful indiscretion in living so much elsewhere.
Only one man ventured to be censorious, and that was Madison Peyton, who was accustomed to impress himself upon the community in ways which were sometimes anything but agreeable, but to which everybody was accustomed to submit in a nameless sort of fear of his sharp tongue—everybody, that is to say, except Aunt Polly and John Meaux.
Aunt Polly was not afraid of Madison Peyton for several reasons. The first was that Aunt Polly was not accustomed to stand in awe of anybody. The second was that her blood{97} was quite the bluest in all that part of the State and she had traditions behind her. Finally she was a shrewdly penetrative person who had long ago
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