resumed some embroidery of exquisite appearance, while my hostess talked
to me.

Both wore their hair in a simple fashion to suit their years, which must
have been seventy or more; both were dressed with the dignity that such
years call for; and I may mention here that so were all the ladies above
a certain age in this town of admirable old-fashioned propriety. In New
York, in Boston, in Philadelphia, ladies of seventy won't be old ladies
any more; they're unwilling to wear their years avowedly, in quiet
dignity by their firesides; they bare their bosoms and gallop egregiously
to the ball-rooms of the young; and so we lose a particular graciousness
that Kings Port retains, a perspective of generations. We happen all at
once, with no background, in a swirl of haste and similarity.

One of the many things which came home to me during the conversation that
now began (so many more things came home than I can tell you!) was that
Mrs. Gregory St. Michael's tongue was assuredly "downright" for Kings
Port. This I had not at all taken in while she talked to me, and her
friend's reference to it had left me somewhat at a loss. That better
precision and choice of words which I have mentioned, and the manner in
which she announced her opinions, had put me in mind of several fine
ladles whom I had known in other parts of the world; but hers was an
individual manner, I was soon to find, and by no means the Kings Port
convention. This convention permitted, indeed, condemnations of one's
neighbor no less sweeping, but it conveyed them in a phraseology far more
restrained.

"I cannot regret your coming to Kings Port," said my hostess, after we
had talked for a little while, and I had complimented the balmy March
weather and the wealth of blooming flowers; "but I fear that Fanning is