"The silver is good,
but there's hardly enough of it to pay one of those debts--and I've
nothing else but Clem. But if I tried to sell him," she added brightly,
"it would only bring on trouble again with your Northern President. I
know just how it would be."
We parted on this jest. Miss Caroline, I believe, went to be scolded by
Clem for her trifling ways, while I sought out Solon Denney.
When something must be done, I seem never to know what it shall be. I
believe Solon is often quite as uncertain, but he will never confess
this, so that talk with him under such circumstances stimulates if it
does not sustain.
I put Miss Caroline's difficulties before him. As any common catalogue
of troubles will not provoke Solon from a happy unconcern which is
temperamental, I spared no details in my recital, and I observed at
length that my listener was truly aroused to the bad way in which Miss
Caroline found herself. He sat forward in his chair, rested one elbow
upon his untidy desk, and for several moments of silence jabbed an inky
pen rhythmically into the largest rutabaga ever grown in Slocum County.
At last he sat back and gazed upon me distantly from inspired eyes.
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