All the way back to the hotel we strode side
by side in pregnant silence; neither did we speak as we ascended to our
rooms.
Some time later, while I was dressing for dinner, he entered my
bedchamber. At the moment, as it happened, I was putting cuff-links into
a dress shirt. With this task I busied myself, dreading to look up. In
the meantime I felt his eyes fixed upon me. When the links were in, I
delayed meeting his gaze by buttoning the little button in one
sleeve-vent, above the cuff.
"Do you mean to say you button those idiotic little buttons?" he
demanded. "I didn't know that anybody ever did that!"
"I don't always," I answered apologetically.
"I should hope not!" he returned. Then he continued: "Do you remember
where we are to be taken to-morrow?"
"Yes," I said. "To the Pringle house."
"Well," said he, "I just came in to ask you, as a favor, not to get off
any fanciful ideas that you may have thought up, about the way to spell
Pringle."
CHAPTER XXX
POLITICS, A NEWSPAPER AND ST. CECILIA
Charleston is very definitely a part of South Carolina. That is not
always the case with a State and its chief city. It is not the case with
the State and the City of New York. New York City has about the same
relation to New York State as a goldpiece has to a large table-top on
one corner of which it lies.
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