And I reflected as I went—or if I didn't, I have often done so since—how full is life of this same proceeding. Thwarted plans and broken promises and disappointed hopes—yet all that remains for us is to take up our humdrum tasks again, to pick up our waiting pitcher and go our way through some back alley and across some homely yard—for the cream.
They were still on the porch when I got back. And Mr. Laird was swinging away in one of the big easy chairs, as much at home as if he had known us all his life. His hat was lying on the floor and his hair was hardly a bit red in the failing light. He rose as I came on to the porch.
"Did you get the cream?" he asked seriously, as if it were a matter of importance.
"Oh, yes," I said, "Lyn's thrashing away at it by this time. She's our cook, you know," I added informatively.
"I'm vastly interested in these darkies," he said as we both sat down. "We have very few of them in Edinburgh—the thermometer doesn't agree with them. They're quite a study, aren't they?" pointing as he spoke to a sable boy who was carrying a pail across the yard.
"You'll find the life here very different, won't you, sir?" my uncle remarked; "but I suppose you hear a great deal, even in Scotland, of what's called the 'Nigger problem,' don't you?"
"Yes," returned our visitor, "we're reminded of it rather startlingly sometimes—by what we see in the newspapers. But I suppose such despatches—about lynch law, I mean—are decidedly exaggerated."
Uncle's face clouded a little. "I never saw any of your papers, of course," he said; "but I should fancy 'twould be difficult to exaggerate much about some things that have happened in the South, sir."
"Then there must be some terrible scenes of brutality," rejoined Mr. Laird, looking about the circle in an evident attempt to make the conversation general.
"That depends on what you call brutality, sir," my uncle answered, his voice suddenly intense, his eyes fixed very earnestly on his guest. "We reckon here, sir—all Southern gentlemen reckon—that people who have only heard of these things, and who are not—who aren't familiar with the situation; we reckon, sir, that they're hardly justified in pronouncing an opinion."