"I will," he promised eagerly. "And I'll show it to Unker Wichard."
"Philip!... Philip!" She felt that he was slipping away from her. "Oh, Mammy Cely, make him remember me!"
"I will, Miss Margaret!" the old woman declared, and to Philip's mystification they were both in tears. "The baby in that picture is white and my baby was black, but somehow the crease in that little laig make me think of Cass. I ain't gwineter let him furgit you. No 'm!"
In their interest in the picture and all it stood for they forgot the time till Aunt Dicey announced dinner. Margaret looked at her watch in dismay. The noon train was gone.
"Go on down to dinner, Miss Margaret," insisted Mammy Cely. "Look to me lak you're cuttin' off yo' nose to spite yo' face. Marse Richard ain't never ast once does you stay. And he ain't gwineter. He jes fix it so you kin and then leave you free. That's Marse Richard's way. He ain't no talker. Why, honey, fum the day he come and foun' Philip gone he ain't never once mention to me yo' catnippin' that chile. No 'm, he ain't!"
"I don't want any dinner," said Margaret. "I think Mr. De Jarnette's bread would choke me."
"Miss Margaret, honey, that's foolishness! Nothin' ain't gwine choke you after you make up yo' min' to it. Sho's you born, chile, you kin swaller a heap er things in this world you think you can't!"
"I guess that's so," said Margaret. "I used to think—" Then with sudden helplessness—"I don't know what I think nowadays. Well—I'll stay." And when she sat down to the cosy meal with Philip across from her and Mammy Cely in beaming attendance, she wondered that she could ever have been so blind as not to see that this gave her an advantage that an hour's stay never could. How much easier to keep herself in Philip's remembrance if she sat thus with him every time she came.... Surely Richard De Jarnette could not have thought of this.