"And mine, I hope, Culpepper," came out through the open doorway from Papa reading under the gas-jet in the hall. "Kindly accept the fact that I am aiding and abetting her. She came to her father this time first."
Mamma, coming in on this tearfully, was most emphatic: "I blame Marcus, blame him entirely. He's Juanita's own child for stirring up trouble or trying to, for other people. He defended himself to my face by saying I had kept Selina so overyoung for her years she's almost ridiculous, and that he's trying to help her to find what I've deprived her of, her right to be a reasoning and thinking human creature." Mamma produced her pocket handkerchief.
"Juanita herself came around with him," said Auntie aggrievedly. "She'd better have stayed at home and mended her clothes. Her skirt was without a braid and frayed, and two buttons were gone from the front of her waist. Instead she told us that if we of the older generation didn't face the demands of the present younger one, it simply means they'll cut us out of their working plans and repudiate us. Don't ask me what she meant. You've heard Juanita. And she said the time was at hand and was ripe and she was warning us. What time she didn't specify. That she hadn't been prophesying to her sex all these years not to know the signs now they were here. She talked like an altogether determined and fanatical person, and with no more sense to it than just what I say, but then Juanita's talk is always more or less that way."
"Marcus, of course! I might have guessed he was in it," said Culpepper with small patience. But then these two never had struck it off anyway, neither ever willing to concede a thing to the other, Maud always said. "It's a fool proposition, I beg your pardon, Cousin Robert, since you say you're in it, but I'm with Cousin Lavinia and ole Miss here, every time. If Selina's got to teach, she'd better teach for less here at home where we all can look after her."
He spoke to Selina presently, suggesting they take a walk about the block. He began to question her almost as soon as they were started, the dry sycamore leaves on the pavement crackling under their feet. This Selina by his side was scant eighteen now.
"It's true then, what you wrote in your letter? That it's you who want to go? You're thinner than you were and you're pale. Stop here under the gas post and let me look at you. What's it all about?"
He seemed almost to be making an issue of her wanting to go. She colored in the dark with a feeling of vague uneasiness that she was about to disappoint and hurt him by what she must say. And yet when she once was started, she amazed herself by the actual passion with which she spoke.
"It's like rosy beckoning fingers, Culpepper, and sweet odors I've longed for, and food and drink I'm desperate for. It's not Florida or Kalamazoo or Keokuk nor any other definite spot, Culpepper. I've thought about it and I know. It's the unknown. It must sound to you that I'm talking wildly and foolishly, but I won't allow it's either of those and I won't allow I'm to blame."
He dropped her arm from his at this, and walked back to her gate beside her with no further word.
"Good night," then he said. And yet he had asked her for her point of view upon it! She had always thought Culpepper fair!