'
'Madam's son!' I exclaimed in astonishment, forgetting in my surprise
that the lady was present.
'Yes, sir,' she remarked, 'my oldest boy is twenty.'
'Excuse me, Madam; I forgot that in your climate one never grows old.'
'There you are wrong, sir; I'm sure I _feel_ old when I think how soon
my boys will be men.'
'Not old yet, Alice,' said the Colonel, in a singularly familiar tone;
'you seem to me no older than when you were fifteen.'
'You have been long acquainted,' I remarked, not knowing exactly what to
say.
'Oh yes,' replied my host, 'we were children together.'
'Your Southern country, Madam, affords a fine field for young men of
enterprise.'
'My eldest son resides in Germany,' replied the lady. 'He expects to
make that country his home. He would have passed his examination at
Heidelberg this autumn had not circumstances called him here.'
'You are widely separated,' I replied.
'Yes, sir; his father thinks it best, and I suppose it is. Thomas, here,
is to return with his brother, and I may live to see neither of them
again.'
My curiosity was naturally much excited to learn more, but nothing
further being volunteered, and the conversation turning to other topics,
I left the table with it unsatisfied.
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