Big Abel gloomily shook his head. “We all 'ud des better go 'long home ter Ole Miss,” he returned, for he was in no mood for compromises. “Caze I ain' use ter de po' w'ite trash en dey ain' use ter me.”
“Go if you want to,” retorted Dan, sternly, “but you go alone,” and the negro, protesting under his breath, laid the clothes away and went down to his breakfast.
Dan sat down by the window and wrote a letter to Betty which he never sent. When he thought of her now it was as if half the world instead of ten miles lay between them; and quickly as he would have resented the hint of it from Jack Hicks, to himself he admitted that he was fast sinking where Betty could not follow him. What would the end be? he asked, and disheartened by the question, tore the paper into bits and walked moodily up and down the room. He had lived so blithely until to-day! His lines had fallen so smoothly in the pleasant places! Not without a grim humour he remembered now that last year his grievance had been that his tailor failed to fit him. Last year he had walked the floor in a rage because of a wrinkled coat, and to-day—His road had gone rough so suddenly that he stumbled like a blind man when he tried to go over it in his old buoyant manner.
An hour later he was still pacing restlessly to and fro, when the door softly opened and Mrs. Hicks looked in upon him with a deprecating smile. As she lingered on the threshold, he stopped in the middle of the room and threw her a sharp glance over his shoulder.
“Is there anything you wish?” he questioned irritably.
Shaking her head, she came slowly toward him and stood in her soiled wrapper and curl papers, where the gray light from the latticed window fell full upon her.
“It ain't nothin',” she answered hurriedly. “Nothin' except Jack's been tellin' me you're in trouble, Mr. Dan.”
“Then he has been telling you something that concerns nobody but myself,” he replied coolly, and continued his walking.
There was a nervous flutter of her wrapper, and she passed her knotted hand over her face.
“You are like yo' mother, Mr. Dan,” she said with an unexpectedness that brought him to a halt. “An' I was the last one to see her the night she went away. She came in here, po' thing, all shiverin' with the cold, an' she wouldn't set down but kep' walkin' up an' down, up an' down, jest like you've been doin' fur this last hour. Po' thing! Po' thing! I tried to make her take a sip of brandy, but she laughed an' said she was quite warm, with her teeth chatterin' fit to break—”