Naturally the Gilmores knew every line of the play.
"As perfectly," ventured the two young Napoleonites, "as John the Baptist knows the moral law, don't you?"
"Better, I infer," said Gilmore abstractedly. They were in the ladies' cabin, awaiting its preparation as a stage, behind the curtains that screened it from the gentlemen's cabin, the auditorium. His wife smiled for him.
"Even my Harriet," she said, "knows one or two parts. She's played Miss Ramsey's in emergencies."
Her half-dozen feminine hearers flinched. Yet one said, excusingly: "That's a servant's part, anyhow."
"And Harriet's her very size and shape," said another.
And another, drolly: "They're enough alike to be kin!"
"Harriet's free, isn't she?" asked the first.
"Yes," replied Mrs. Gilmore, without a blush, looking squarely at Hugh, who stood among them silent.
"You'd never notice she was a nigrah if you wa'n't told," said another, "or didn't see her with nigrahs." v But then said a youth, cousin to one of the girls: "Yet after all a nigrah she is."