“Certainly, Mrs. Vernon,” and for the next half hour he was busily employed in undoing what he had done in the half hour before.
“Oh, it will be easy to find employment for him along those lines,” said I when she told me. “We’ll just make him do things and undo them and that laugh of his will keep Minerva sweet natured and he’ll earn his wages over and over again.”
“Well, it seems sort of wicked to make a human being do unnecessary things just for the sake of making him undo them again,” said my mistress of economics.
“In cases like that the end justifies the means.”
After lunch that day Ethel interrogated Minerva as to her feelings.
“Oh, Mis. Vernon, James is like human folks to me. He’s in a way different from you an’ Mist. Vernon.”
“Do you mean you think he’s better?” said Ethel, more to draw Minerva out than for any other reason.
“No, but he’s more folksy. You an’ Mist. Vernon, after all’s said an’ done, is white. It ain’t dat he’s kinder dan you, but he’s more my kind. My, he’d be lovely in de city.”
Minerva sighed.
“Minerva, don’t think about the city, you wouldn’t have such a chance to sing together in the city as you have here. I couldn’t get up such a concert as this is going to be in the city, but up here you have just that much more freedom.”