“Don’t hurry,” she said in a pained and yet gentle tone.
“Oh, no, don’t hurry!” Joe repeated, with a sneer; “stay to breakfast; I’ll throw some more wood on the fire an’ let’s set down an’ talk.”
The defeat of Mrs. Ewebanks was more than complete. Between her hostess and the son she stood wavering. This provoked an actual vocal sound from Mary Ann. At any other time the Thompsons would have marveled over it. She grunted in impatience and then said audibly:
“Come on, ma, let’s go home.” And in this it was as if the child had at once extended a verbal hand of sympathy to the Thompsons and given her mother a back-handed slap.
There was nothing for Mrs. Ewebanks to do but obey, for Mary Ann had stalked heavily from the cabin and just outside the door stood beckoning to her. Joe had gone to the fireplace and was digging a grave in the hot ashes for the fire-coated back-log.
Mrs. Thompson shambled to the door and looked after her departing guests. She could see their dresses in the light of the thinly veiled moon as they slowly descended the narrow path. When the noise Joe was making with the shovel and tongs had ceased she heard someone speaking in a raised voice. For several minutes it continued, rising and falling with the breeze, an uninterrupted monologue, growing fainter and fainter as the visitors receded.
It was the voice of Mary Ann.
III
The Hansards lived in an old-fashioned, two-storied, white frame building. It had dormer windows in the gray shingled roof and a long veranda with massive fluted columns. Back of the house rose a rocky hill covered with pines, and in front lay a wide, rolling lawn, through which, for a quarter of a mile, stretched a white-graveled drive, shaded by fine old water oaks from the house to the main traveled road.
Along this drive the next morning Joe Thompson drove his mother in a rickety buggy. On the left near the house was a row of cabins where the negro servants lived, and standing somewhat to itself was the white cottage of the overseer of the plantation. The doors of all the cabins were closed, and no one was in sight.