“Angels?” queried Margaret.
“Why, don’t yer know we’uns has hearn tell all ’bout de society out to Idlewild? And eberybody done says you’uns is saints and no mistake,” exclaimed Aunt Liza.
“Everybody is very kind,” said Margaret soberly, “but we are far from saints. We are only trying to find the best side of human nature.”
“Yo’ done it—yo’ done it fo’ shuah, Miss Margaret!” exclaimed Eph excitedly. “Yo’ jest took us po’ trash and made us ’sponsible bein’s, and showed us how to be ’spectable if we is brack.”
“Deed yo’ did, Miss Margaret,” chimed in Aunt Liza. “And de bestest part ob it is, as Eph’s a-sayin’, dar wa’n’t no ornery mission ’bout it.”
“I’s jes been wonderin’, Miss Margaret,” interrupted Eph, “eber since I hearn ’bout Antoine’s singin’ and de way de home meetin’s is callin’ de po’ sinners, ef dar’s any reason why mammy an’ me couldn’t come jes once, anyway. It’s white folkses’ meetin’, I know, but I jes like mighty well ter heah some ob Antoine’s singin’. Day do say he jes ’lectrify de aujience.”
“Come and welcome,” said Margaret, who could not forbear a smile at Eph’s rendering of popular phraseology. “We have room always for those who are trying to find the way up.”
“Deed’n I’s so glad, Miss Margaret,” said Aunt Liza effusively. “’Pears like sometimes dey’s a dreffle prejice ’gainst folks jes cause de Lawd made deir skin brack.”
That evening, as Aunt Liza and Eph mounted the stairs of the Home Hall, as it had come to be called, Red Handed Mike stood in the doorway and blurted out as they passed: “We don’t want none o’ them d——d niggers here. If Brother Gib ’lows ’em to stay I’ll break up the meetin’!”
Just then Gilbert, accompanied by his sisters and Alice Houghton, entered the hall.