"Your stand for liberty—was—well—timed. It was—certainly the best thing you could have done," commented Stuyvesant in jerks. He was trying very hard not to look at Cecilia, and it was work not to.
"Celie," said Jeremiah, "what has this fellow did to the potatoes? He does be-devil 'em so. He puts on so many airs that yuh hardly recognise 'em fer potatoes!"
"I don't know, dear," answered Cecilia, "but I'll see about it to-morrow."
"Mebbe Celie couldn't fry potatoes!" said Jeremiah. He smacked his lips loudly in remembrance. "These here furriners," he went on, "that we hire to cook,—poor things, they don't know no better!" And thus Jeremiah disposed of French chefs. The lips of one of the pompous persons curled a little. The roses nodded and bobbed.
To Stuyvesant, who stared resolutely on them, they all whispered, "Cecilia!"
To Cecilia they shouted "Keefer, the butler."
To John they were lovelier that night from a new hope, and, of his father, a new understanding.
But to Jeremiah Madden they brought back only the heat of an overcrowded flat—the woman who held his heart dying by inches, when money might have made her live.... Money! ... A little tired-eyed girl struggling under a woman's load. A little boy who always cried for things he couldn't have.
"The bunnit with pink roses."
Life's question mark,—Fate's smile,—or God's hand?