“No, I am not; but I don’t like to be waited on and fussed over so much. I don’t myself! It is all wrong and on false grounds. They treat me here just as if I was a lady and——” began Mrs. Pole, but she in her turn was interrupted by Palma, who said:
“Poley, dear, they treat you as a respectable woman, and as they treat all respectable women—that is, all respectable white women. You are to be our housekeeper and, as such, one of the family. Don’t ‘kick against the pricks,’ Poley, dear.”
“I kick against anything? If you knew the stiffness of my joints through sitting so long in the cars you wouldn’t be talking of me and kicking in the same breath,” said Mrs. Pole with an injured air.
Ringing steps, attended by shuffling feet, were heard coming along the hall, and then the voice of Cleve Stuart saying:
“That will do, ’Sias! Thank you. Good-night.”
And the shuffling feet went back and the ringing steps came on, and the door opened and Cleve Stuart entered the room.
“Well, good-night, dearie, I’m gone. Good-night, Mr. Stuart,” said Mrs. Pole. And rising from the second easy-chair into which she had thrown herself she nodded and left them, regardless of Stuart’s good-natured protestations that she must not let him drive her away.
All our tired travelers “slept the sleep of the just” that night.
As for Palma, she knew nothing from the time her head touched her pillow until she opened her eyes the next morning.
The room was dark, or lighted only by the red glow of the hickory wood fire, and it was silent but for an occasional crackle of some brand that was not of hickory, but of some more resinous wood that had found its way in among the harder sort.