"No. Neither one."
Philip gave a sigh of relief.
"I'm awful glad! 'Cause if it was stone I feel 'most sure it would hurt you sometimes. My heart thes thumps when I run. And if it was a wolf heart maybe you might hurt somebody else—like that other man."
The organ in question was beating rather tumultuously just now. Was it possible that it was giving its impassive owner a few unseen blows? Or was it that the fair head of his nephew was pressing upon it overhard?
"It seems to me you have been having a good deal of heart talk lately," commented Mr. De Jarnette, grimly. "I think I'll be looking after some of it."
He looked after it the next day by demanding sternly of Mammy Cely, "What do you mean by telling Philip all this stuff about men with wolf hearts? Don't you know he will believe it? I won't have him frightened with your bug-a-boo stories." Then, thinking of her rooted antipathy to his father, he added, "And I won't have you saying anything to him about the De Jarnettes, either."
Since finding from the child's talk that the Varnums were held up constantly before him, he had felt a growing jealousy for the De Jarnette name.
Mammy Cely replied with her accustomed freedom.
"I ain't tole him 'bout the Jarnettes havin' wolf hearts. I done kep' it f'um him! Nobody ever heared me runnin' down my own white folks." Which was true, but she had never acknowledged the family into which she had been adopted as hers, save the one lone descendant of her young mistress—Richard himself. The rest to her were as Scythians and Barbarians. "I suttingly ain't gwine do it to they offspringers."
But Richard was not entirely satisfied.