The first day he called he found five young men who had lingered beyond
their appointed hours and were encroaching on his time without the
slightest desire to apologize. He could see that she was trying to get
rid of them but they hung on with a dogged, quiet persistence that was
annoying beyond measure.
War seemed to have precipitated an epidemic of furious love-making. He
watched Jennie twist these enterprising young Southerners around her
slender fingers with an ease that was alarming. They were fine-looking,
wholesome fellows, too--a little given to boyish boasting of military
prowess, but for all that genuine, serious, big-hearted boys.
The matter-of-fact way in which she ruled them, as if she were a queen
born to the royal purple and they were so many lackeys, was something
new under the sun.
For a moment the thought was cheering. Perhaps it was her way of serving
notice on his rivals that her real interests lay in another direction.
But the disconcerting thing about it was that it seemed to be a habit of
mind.
For the life of him he couldn't make out her real attitude. The one
encouraging feature was that she certainly treated him with more
seriousness than these home boys. It might be, of course, because she
thought him a foreigner.
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