He would not only make
the best of it, he would take advantage of it to press his way a step
closer to her heart.
"Are all of the girls of the South like you, Miss Jennie?" he asked with
a quizzical smile.
"You mean insulting to their fathers?" she laughed.
"If you care to put it so--I mean, is their loyalty to the Confederacy a
mania?"
"Is mine a mania?"
"Perhaps I should say a divine passion--are all your Southern women thus
inspired?"
"Yes."
"In the far South and the West?"
"Everywhere!"
"It's wonderful."
"Perhaps because we can't fight we try to make up for it."
He watched her keenly.
"It's something bigger than that. Somehow it's a prophecy to me of a new
future--a new world. Maybe after all political wisdom shall not begin
and end with man."
Jennie blushed again under the admiring gaze with which Socola held her.
The carriage stopped at the door of the Alabama hospital. Socola leaped
to the ground and extended his hand for Jennie's. He allowed himself the
slightest pressure of the slender fingers as he lifted her out. It was
his right in just that moment to press her hand. He put the slightest
bit more than was needed to firmly grasp it, and the blood flamed hotly
in her cheeks.
He hastened to carry her baskets and boxes of peaches and grapes inside.
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