Champion stood on his guard. "Why, I don't know why capital shouldn't be the fundamental need, seh, of a country that's been impoverished by a great waugh!"
Barbara exulted, but Garnet was for peace. "I suppose you'll find Suez swarming with men, women, and horses."
"Yes," said Champion—Fair was speaking to Barbara—"to say nothing of yahoos, centaurs, and niggehs." The Major's abundant laugh flattered him; he promised to join the party at luncheon, lifted his plumed shako, and galloped away. Garnet drove into the edge of the town at a trot.
"Here's where the reservoir's to be," he said, and spun down the slope into the shaded avenue, and so to the town's centre.
"Laws-a-me! Miss Barb," whispered Johanna, "but dis-yeh town is change'! New hotel! brick! th'ee sto'ies high!" Barbara touched her for silence.
"But look at de new sto'es!" murmured the girl. Negroes—the men in dirty dusters, the women in smart calicoes, girls in dowdy muslins and boy's hats—and mountain whites, coatless men, shoeless women—hung about the counters dawdling away their small change.
"Colored and white treated precisely alike, you notice," said Garnet, and Barbara suppressed a faint grunt from Johanna.
Trade had spread into side-streets. Drinking-houses were gayly bedight and busy.
"That's the new Courier building."
The main crowd had gone down to the railway tracks, and it was midsummer, yet you could see and feel the town's youth.