Page:The Berkeleys and their neighbors.djvu/20

 "I see him now," said Pembroke with a smile, "shaking hands with Mrs. Peyton."

Olivia smiled too. There had been a flirtation between Mrs. Peyton and Colonel Berkeley forty odd years before, and as everything that happened in the community was perfectly well known by everybody else, the episode had crystallized into a tradition. Colonel Berkeley had been known to swear that Sally Peyton in her youth was a jilt. Mrs. Peyton always said that Tom Berkeley was not to be depended on. The Colonel was saying to Mrs. Peyton in his grandest tones:

"Madam, Time has passed you by."

"Ah, my dear Colonel," responded Mrs. Peyton with a quizzical look at Colonel Berkeley's elaborate toilet and flamboyant shirt ruffles, "we can't cross the dead line of sixty without showing it. Even art cannot conceal it."

"Just like Sally Peyton's sharp tongue," the colonel growled sotto voce—while a suppressed guffaw from Pete on the verge of the group, showed the remark was not lost on that factotum.

"And Petrarch too," cried Mrs. Peyton in her fine, jovial old voice, holding out her hand.

Pete shuffled up and took her hand in his black paw.

"Howdy, Miss Sally. Lordy, marster done tole de truf—you looks jes ez young an' chipper—How's Mandy?"

"Mandy has lost her senses since old Abe Lincoln made you all free. She's left me and