'Glad I've come back, Nannie?'
'Why, yeth, thurely, Mathter Julian.'
Nana's demonstrations were always restrained, respectful. She habitually boasted that although life in the easy South might have induced her to relax her severity towards her figure, she had never allowed it to impair her manners.
'Can I go up to Eve's room, Nannie?'
'I thuppoth tho, my dear.'
'Nannie, you know, you ought to be an old negress.'
'Why, dear Lord! me black?'
'Yes; you'd be ever so much more suitable.'
He ran off to Eve's room upstairs, laughing, boyish again after his boredom and irritability. He had been in Eve's room many times before, but with his fingers on the door handle he paused. Again that strange vexation at her years had seized him.
He knocked.