“I only wish that we had a barn. I would soon enough force you to entertain your negro visitors there instead of bringing their odoriferous persons and filthy accompaniments into this house,” cried the sister vindictively.
“You must be reasonable, my most precise sister,” said David.
“When I became interested in the science of ethnology, I deemed it expedient to begin by studying the negro race, their habits, characteristics, manners and tendencies. Being a man born and bred in a northern state I have never had the opportunities possessed by southerners, who are surrounded by negroes from infancy, to know the traits of that most interesting race. Hence I have been forced, on behalf of science, to go forth and gather such material as was obtainable for subjects of study and observation.”
“David, don’t be hypocritical with me; you know that neither ethnology nor the negro race possessed the slightest interest for you, until you learned that Walter Burton had a strain of negro blood in his veins.”
“I do not deny that my zeal was not diminished by that fact,” answered Chapman shortly and dryly.
“And I maintain that your zeal is caused entirely by that fact, and I wish to say further, David Chapman,” exclaimed the withered wisp of a woman, drawing herself up very straight in her chair and looking angrily at her brother, “if all this investigation and research lead to anything that may cause trouble, annoyance or pain to Lucy Dunlap, whom I have held in these arms as a baby, then I say that you are a wicked, ungrateful man, and I wish to know nothing of your diabolic designs, nor of the disgusting science that you call ethnology.”
God bless the dried-up spinster! God bless thy bony, skinny arms that held that baby! Thrice blessed be the good and kindly heart that beats warmly in thy weak and withered little body.
Seriously and steadily did Chapman gaze for a minute at the vehement, fragile figure before him, then said meditatively,
“I believe she loves the Dunlap name as much as I do myself.”