"He's sparkin' some gal, Miss Sue; dat's what ails him," she said one evening
as she knelt on the sitting-room hearth to kindle the first fire of the season. "Dey ain't but two t'ings onder heaben dat'll keep a man f'om eatin'. One's a woman, t' other is lack ob food."
Judge Hollis looked over his glasses and smiled.
"Who do you think the lady is, Melvy?"
Aunt Melvy wagged her head knowingly as she held a paper across the fireplace to start the blaze.
"I ain't gwine tell no tales on Mist' Sandy. But yer can't fool dis heah ole nigger. I mind de signs; I knows mo' 'bout de young folks in dis heah town den dey t'ink I do. Fust t'ing you know, I'm gwine tell on some ob 'em, too. I 'spect de doctor would put' near die ef he knowed dat Miss Annette was a-havin' incandescent meetin's wif Carter Nelson 'most ever' day."
"Is Sandy after Annette, too?"
"No, sonny, no!" said Aunt Melvy, to whom all men were "sonny" until they died of old age. "Mist' Sandy he's aimin' at
high game. He's fix' his eyeball on de shore-'nough quality."
"Do you mean Ruth Nelson?" asked Mrs. Hollis, snapping her scissors sharply. "He surely wouldn't be fool enough to think she would look at him. Why, the Nelsons think they are the only aristocratic people that ever lived in Clayton. If they had paid less attention to their ancestors and more to their descendants, they might have had a better showing."