“Oh, never! It was too injurious to ourselves. But something between slavery and equality.” And I ended with a quotation: “‘Patience, cousin, and shuffle the cards.’”
“You may call me cousin—this once—because you have been, really, quite nice—for a Northerner.”
Now we had come to the place where she must understand me.
“Not a Northerner, Miss La Heu.”
She became mocking. “Scarcely a Southerner, I presume?”
But I kept my smile and my directness. “No more a Southerner than a Northerner.”
“Pray what, then?”
“An American.”
She was silent.
“It’s the ‘sacred trust’—for me.”