"No, Hayles will fight for Hayles, pop-a says, but they won't work for them."
"Also that he was going to be married. But Phyllis told my mother so meekly that the past was all past——"
"And she'd seemed so good for so long, I suppose."
"Yes—that even my father thought it was past, and when we went aboard the boat and it started up the river, there at the wheel was your uncle Dan."
"You didn't dare tell on her?—Oh, you were only ten years old!"
"It wasn't that. I was older than I am to-day. But if I told a word I'd have to tell all, and by that time she'd made me believe that about all the guilt was mine."
"Yours! Well, and then? Was his lady-love on the boat?"
"No, but a passenger who came aboard at Natchez turned out to be the overseer Phyllis had once run away from."
"Oh! oh! the man who lost the child! What a difference that must have made!"
"Difference a wind makes to a fire. And yet for a time things ran along as smoothly as the old boat."