I leaned back with a sigh of content, feeling already as if I had got my boyhood back again.
Radnor enlivened the three miles with stories of the houses we passed and the people who lived in them, and to my law-abiding Northern ears, the recital indubitably smacked of the South.

This old gentleman--so Rad called him--had kept an illicit still in his cellar for fifteen years, and it had not been discovered until after his death (of delirium tremens).

The young lady who lived in that house--one of the belles of the county--had eloped with the best man on the night before the wedding and the rightful groom had shot himself.

The one who lived here had eloped with her father's overseer, and had rowed across the river in the only available boat, leaving her outraged parent on the opposite bank.
I finally burst out laughing.
"Does everyone in the South run away to get married?
Don't you ever have any legitimate weddings with cake and rice and old shoes ?" As I spoke I remembered Nannie and wondered if I had touched on a delicate subject.
But Radnor returned my laugh.
"We do have a good many elopements," he acknowledged.

"Maybe there are more cruel parents in the South." Then he suddenly sobered.