"Quite good." The old Captain stood rubbing his hands with his odd air
of continued delight. "How do you like this place, anyway, Peter?" He
wrapped his gown around him, sat down in the old Morris chair beside the
book-piled table, and indicated another seat for Peter.
The mulatto took it, aware of a certain flexing of Hooker's Bend custom,
where negroes, unless old or infirm, are not supposed to sit in the
presence of whites.
"Do you mean the study, Captain?"
"Yes, the study, the whole place."
"It's very pleasant," replied Peter; "it has the atmosphere of age."
Captain Renfrew nodded.
"These old places," pursued Peter, "always give me an impression of
statesmanship, somehow. I always think of grave old gentlemen busy with
the cares of public policy."
The old man seemed gratified.
"You are sensitive to atmosphere. If I may say it, every Southron of the
old regime was a statesman by nature and training. The complete care of
two or three hundred negroes, a regard for their bodily, moral, and
spiritual welfare, inevitably led the master into the impersonal
attitude of statecraft.
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