"You 're not having any trouble with this nigger, hey?" he demanded.
"No," said Paul, flushing. The Kafir bit off a smile and stood submissive, with an eye on the boy's troubled face.
"You don't want to let them get fresh with you," said the policeman. "I 've been keepin' my eye on him and he talks too much. Have you finished with him now?"
His silver-headed whip came out from behind his back ready to dismiss the negro in the accepted manner. Paul trembled and took a step which brought him near enough to seize the whip if it should flick back for the cut.
"Let him alone," he said wrathfully. "Mind your own business."
"Eh?" the policeman was astonished.
"You let him alone," repeated Paul, bracing himself nervously for combat, and ready to cry because he could not keep from trembling. He had never come to blows in his life, but he meant to now. The policeman stared at him, and laughed harshly.
"He 's a friend of yours, I suppose," he suggested, striving for a monstrous affront.
"Yes," retorted Paul hotly, "he is."
For a moment it looked as though the policeman, outraged in the deepest recesses of his nature, would burst a blood vessel or cry for help. A man whose prayer that he may be damned is granted on the nail could scarcely have looked less shocked. He recovered himself with a gulp.