It seemed too Peavey and perverse a thing that she should, finding our truce honorably observed by myself, behave toward me as if with a cold design to bring me down in disgrace--as a proof of her superior powers and my own wretched weakness.

Yet this very thing was I obliged regretfully to concede of her before many days.

And it was behavior that I could palliate only by reminding myself constantly that she was not only a woman but the daughter of Miss Caroline, and by that token subject inevitably to certain infirmities of character.

And still did she at times evince for me that shyness which only enhanced my peril.
I managed to refrain, though in so grievous a plight, from wishing for another war; though I did concede that if we must ever again be cursed with war, it might as well come now as later.

Regrettable though I must consider it, I should there find, spite of my disability, some field of active endeavor to engage my mind.
Lacking war, I sought distraction in a matter close at hand--one which possessed quite all the vivacity of war without its violence.
Early in the summer Mrs.Aurelia Potts had resumed her activities in behalf of our broader culture, whereupon our people murmured promptly at Solon Denney; for him did Little Arcady still hold to account for the infliction of this relentless evangel.
It was known that something still remained to Mrs.Potts, even after a year, of the pittance secured from the railway company, so that it was not necessity which drove her.