"No," Eudora answered, "don't be a silly, but go down and bring me a rose, if you can find one two-thirds open. I wore one with this dress before and he liked it, and as't me to give it to him. Mebby he will now," she thought, while waiting for Mandy Ann, who soon came back with a beautiful rose hidden under her apron.
"Strues I'm bawn, I b'lieve he's done gone to sleep like ole Miss—he's settin' thar so still," she said.
But he was far from being asleep. He had gone over again and again with everything within his range of vision, from the old woman nodding in her chair, to the bucket of water standing outside the door, with a gourd swimming on the top, and he was wondering at the delay, and feeling more and more that he should take Tom Hardy's advice, when he heard steps on the stairs, which he knew were not Mandy Ann's, and he rose to meet Eudora.
CHAPTER III
THE INTERVIEW
She was a short, slender little girl, not more than sixteen or seventeen, with a sweet face and soft brown eyes which drooped as she came forward, and then looked at him shyly through a mist of tears which she bravely kept back.
"How d'ye. I'm so glad to see you," she said, looking up at him with quivering lips which were so unquestionably asking for a kiss that he gave it, while her face beamed with delight at the caress, and she did not mind how cold, and stiff, and reserved he grew the next moment.
He did not like her "How d'ye," although he knew how common a salutation it was at the South. It savored of Mandy Ann, and her accent was like Mandy Ann's, and her white dress instead of pleasing him filled him with disgust for himself, as he remembered when he first saw it and thought it fine. She had worn a rose then, and he had asked her for it, and put it in his pocket, like an insane idiot, Tom had said. She wore a rose now, but he didn't ask her for it, and he dropped her hand almost as soon as he took it, and called himself a brute when he saw the color come and go in her face, and how she trembled as she sat beside him. He knew she was pretty, and graceful, and modest, and that she loved him as no other woman ever would, but she was untrained, and uneducated, and unused to the world—his world, which would scan her with cold, wondering eyes. He couldn't do it, and he wouldn't—certainly, not yet. He would wait and see what came of his plan which he must unfold, and tell her why he had come. But not there where the old woman might hear and understand, and where he felt sure Mandy Ann was listening. She had stolen down the stairs and gone ostensibly to meet a woman whom Eudora called Sonsie, and who, she said, came every day to do the work now Jake was away.
"Who is Jake?" the man asked, and Eudora replied, "The negro who has taken care of us since I can remember. He is free, but does for us, and is in Richmond now, valleying for a gentleman who pays him big wage, and he spends it all for us."
The stranger flushed at her words indicative of her station, and then suggested that they go outside where they could be sure of being alone, as he had much to say to her.
"Perhaps you will walk part way with me on my return to the 'Hatty,'" he said, glancing at his watch and feeling surprised to find how late it was.