Nobody answered.
“What is all dis, I say?” he again demanded in a more peremptory tone of voice.
“These two gals was fighting, sah,” explained a small boy, in the hope of seeing somebody arrested.
“Mind your own business, buoy!” was all the reward the policeman gave him for his pains, and then the arm of the law, feeling that something was expected of him, proceeded to deliver a speech.
“The truth of de matter is dis,” he observed, looking round with an air of grave authority: “You common folkses are too ignorant. You are ignorant to extreme. You ever see white ladies fight in de street? Answer me that!”
No one venturing to answer, he continued:
“White people don’t fight in de street, because them is ladies and gentleman. But I can’t understand the people of my own colour; they have no respect for themself!”
He spoke more in sorrow than in anger; almost as though he were bitterly lamenting the deficiencies of the working classes. But Susan, though in trouble, would not even then allow herself to be classed with the policeman and others in the category of “common folkses.” “I am not common,” she answered defiantly; “I am not your set!”
“Silence, miss!” thundered the policeman, scandalized. “I am the law! Do you know dat?”
“I never see a black law yet,” cheekily replied Susan, who thought that, if she had to be arrested, there would be at least some satisfaction in humiliating the policeman.