Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/54

 abandoned the old love for a new. For this disloyalty he had been followed by the implacable hatred of the proud families that had accepted ruin with the failing port.

Sometimes they stopped to call upon dry and haughty old dames sitting in close parlors that smelt of sandalwood and camphor, drinking rare tea out of the cups their fathers had brought back from the East fifty years before. The paint peeled from the beautiful classical doorways and weeds grew between the bricks of the sidewalk.

Walking the streets of Salem the Captain liked to take Lanice's arm. This he called 'helping her,' and she graciously accepted it as such, although, because of his lameness, his 'help' sometimes dragged. She knew he was proud of his 'Cousin Laney,' as he called her, and liked the pretty white frilled muslin she wore and her scarlet straw bonnet. His cane tapped the sidewalk. Her skirts swished against the mouldering iron fences.

One day, enough work being done, the weather fine, they idled down Chestnut Street for the beginning of their stroll.

'I believe,' said the Captain, 'that there yonder down the street is a familiar back.'

'Not to me, Cousin Poggy.'

She looked with attention at the retreating back. It was of a tall, strongly built man making considerable speed away from them.

'It's a Ripley back' said Captain Poggy positively; 'if it's not Sears Ripley it's his half-brother