“I never thought of that!” exclaimed Wayne, joining the laughter. “I reckon if he’d wanted me back he’d been after me before this, then. I’ll write tonight, before I go home.”
“I would. What about this boy that’s with you? Why doesn’t he join here, too?”
“June? Why, he—he’s coloured!”
“So you said. What’s that got to do with it? Isn’t he a clean, decent boy?”
“Why, yes, but—I thought——”
“We don’t draw the colour line up here, Sloan. We’ve got more than a dozen coloured fellows in the Association right now. Some of them are mighty well liked, too. You’d better get your friend to come in. It’ll be good for him and good for us. We’re trying to get all the new members we can. See if you can’t persuade him.”
“Oh, he will join if I tell him to,” responded Wayne carelessly. “But it seems—sort of funny——”
“Yes, but you’re not down in Dixie now, my boy. Remember that.”
For once, however, Wayne’s authority failed him. June firmly and respectfully declined to have anything to do with the Y. M. C. A. “Maybe it’s jus’ like you-all say, Mas’ Wayne, but I ain’ fixin’ to act like these yere Northern darkies, no, sir! I done watch ’em. They acts like they thought they was quality, Mas’ Wayne, dressin’ themselves up in store clothes an’ buttin’ white folks right off’n the sidewalk! If they was down in Colquitt County someone’d hit ’em over the head with a axe!”