"Sick? No, Sir, she is well, but she's got to sleep some time. How do you like my flowers?"
"They are very beautiful."
"Yes, Sir, but don't talk quite so loud. Seems to me like you are trying to wake her up. I didn't want to take money for this work," he went on, bending over and pulling up a weed, "for I like to do it, but they insist on paying me. Yes, Sir. And I reckon—I suppose we have here the finest clump of magnolias in all this part of the country. This one, right here, was set out the day Miss Florence was born, twenty-four years ago, now."
"And it is the most graceful tree of them all," I replied.
He cut his black eyes at me. "Yes, Sir, I believe it is, but, even if it wasn't, you might say it was. I beg your pardon, Sir, but you just as well board here. Oh, all the whole human family is not blind. If the rest of them are, I'm not."
"Look here, Washington."
"I'm looking, Sir," he said, his eyes full upon me.
"You were very kind to me, and I am grateful, but I don't want your guardianship, and I won't have your insinuations."
"Why, bless you, Sir, I don't want to be your guardian, and I don't intend to insinuate. I spoke to you once about a danger, and I was afraid you had forgotten it. Don't misunderstand me. I believe you are an honorable man, but honor is not always careful enough when it comes to talking to a lady, and none but an honorable man could make trouble on this occasion. The only trouble you can make—there (nodding toward the bench whereon the young woman sat, in fluffy white), the only trouble you can cause there," he repeated, "would be to make her still more dissatisfied with life. And a trouble might fall hard on you, Sir. Let me tell you something in confidence. People have said that my wedding to the church was what kept me from a marriage of the flesh. I let them believe so, but it is not true. Mr. Belford, a soul that is now cool and quiet in this black breast was once raging and on fire. It was a long time ago. I had just begun to preach. I lived at the house of a friend—over yonder."
He waved his hand toward a distant hill on which was clustered a negro settlement.