Luna was
established in New York, where she had taken a house for a year, and
whence she wrote to her sister that she was going to engage Basil Ransom
(with whom she was in communication for this purpose) to do her
law-business. Olive wondered what law-business Adeline could have, and
hoped she would get into a pickle with her landlord or her milliner, so
that repeated interviews with Mr. Ransom might become necessary. Mrs.
Luna let her know very soon that these interviews had begun; the young
Mississippian had come to dine with her; he hadn't got started much, by
what she could make out, and she was even afraid that he didn't dine
every day. But he wore a tall hat now, like a Northern gentleman, and
Adeline intimated that she found him really attractive. He had been very
nice to Newton, told him all about the war (quite the Southern version,
of course, but Mrs. Luna didn't care anything about American politics,
and she wanted her son to know all sides), and Newton did nothing but
talk about him, calling him "Rannie," and imitating his pronunciation of
certain words. Adeline subsequently wrote that she had made up her mind
to put her affairs into his hands (Olive sighed, not unmagnanimously, as
she thought of her sister's "affairs"), and later still she mentioned
that she was thinking strongly of taking him to be Newton's tutor.
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