"Emmy Lou," he said, "please try again. Go in there yourself and speak to her. Be firm with her—for once. Make her get away from that door. She makes me nervous. Don't be afraid of the old nuisance. This is your house, isn't it—yours and your sister's? Well, then, I thought Southerners knew how to handle darkies. If you can handle this one, suppose you give me a small proof of the fact—right now!"
Reluctantly, as though knowing beforehand what the outcome would be, Emmy Lou stood up, revealing herself as a straight dainty figure in white. She entered the door. Outside in the hammock Harvey strained his ears to hear the dialogue. His sweetheart's voice came to him only in a series of murmurs, but for him there was no difficulty about distinguishing the replies, for the replies were pitched in a strident, belligerent key which carried almost to the yard fence. From them he was able to guess with the utmost accuracy just what arguments against the presence of the negress the girl was making. This, then, was what he heard:
". . . Now, Mizz Emmy Lou, you mout jes' ez well hush up an' save yore breath. You knows an' I knows, even ef he don't know it, dat 'tain't proper fur no young man to be cotein' a young lady right out on a front po'ch widout no chaperoner bein' clost by. Quality folks don't do sech ez dat. Dat's why I taken my feet in my hand an' come hurryin' back yere f'um dat grocery sto' where I'd done went to git a bottle of lemon extractors. I seen yore sister settin' in dat Mistah B. Weil's candy sto', drinkin' ice-cream sody wid a passel of young folks, an' by dat I realise' I'd done lef' you 'lone in dis house wid a young man dat's a stranger yere, an' so I come right back. And yere I is, honey, and yere I stays. . . . Whut's dat you sayin'? De gen'l'man objec's? He do, do he?" The far-carrying voice rose shrilly and scornfully. "Well, let him! Dat's his privilege. Jes' let him keep on objectin' long ez he's a mind to. 'Tain't gwine 'fluence me none. . . . I don't keer none ef he do heah me. Mebbe it mout do him some good ef he do heah me. Hit'll do him good, too, ef he heed me, I lay to dat. Mebbe he ain't been raised de way we is down yere. Ef so, dat's his misfortune." The voice changed. "Whut would yore pore daid mother say ef she knowed I wuz neglectin' my plain duty to you two lone chillen? Think I gwine run ary chancet of havin' you two gals talked about by all de low-down pore w'ite trash scandalisers in dis town? Well, I ain't, an' dat's flat. No, sir-ree, honey! You mout jes' ez well run 'long back out dere on dat front po'ch, 'ca'se I'm tellin' you I ain't gwine stir nary inch f'um whar I is twell yore sister git back yere."
Beaten and discomfited, with one hand up to a burning cheek, Emmy Lou returned to her young man. On his face was a queer smile.
"Did—did you hear what she said?" she asked, bending over him.
"Not being deaf I couldn't well help hearing. I imagine the people next door heard it, too, and are no doubt now enjoying the joke of it."
"Oh, I know she's impossible," admitted Emmy Lou, repeating her lament of a little while before, but taking care even in her mortification to keep her voice discreetly down. "There's no use trying to do anything with her. We've tried and tried and tried, but she just will have her way. She doesn't seem to understand that we've grown up—Mildred and I. She still wants to boss us just as she did when we were children. And she grows more crotchety and more exacting every day."
"And I—poor benighted Yank that I am—came down here filled with a great and burning sympathy for the down-trodden African." Harvey said this as though speaking to himself.
The girl forgot her annoyance in her instinct to come to the defence of her black mentor.
"Oh, but she has been like a mother to us! After mamma died I don't know what we should have done—two girls left alone in this old house—if it hadn't been for Aunt Sharley. She petted us, she protected us, she nursed us when we were sick. Why, Harvey, she couldn't have been more loyal or more devoted or more self-sacrificing than she has been through all these years while we were growing up. I know she loves us with every drop of blood in her veins. I know she'd work her fingers to the bone for us—that she'd die in her tracks fighting for us. We try to remember the debt of gratitude we owe her now that she's getting old and fussy and unreasonable and all crippled with rheumatism."