"I don't know what you hector me for like this," she says. "Ain't it enough that I've got to call folks up to-day and tell them I've made a fool of myself?"
"Not yet," I says. "Not yet you ain't made one of yourself, Mis' Sykes. That's to come, if any. It is hard," I says, "to do the particular thing you'll have to do. There's them," I says crafty, "as'll gloat."
"I thought about them all night long," she says, her breath showing through her words.
"Then think no more, Mis' Sykes," I says, "because there's a reason over there in that house why we should go ahead with our plan—and it's a reason you can't get around."
She looked at me, like one looking with no hope. And then I told her.
I never saw a woman so checkered in her mind. Her head was all reversed, and where had been one notion, another bobbed up to take its place, and where the other one had been previous, a new one was dancing.
"But do they do that?" she ask'. "Do they give war-crosses to negroes?"
"Why not?" I says. "France don't care because the fore-fathers of these soldiers were made slaves by us. She don't lay it up against them. That don't touch their bravery. England never has minded dark skins—look at her East Indians and Egyptians that they say are everywhere in London. Nobody cares but us. Of course France gives negroes crosses of war when they're brave—why shouldn't she?"
"My gracious," Mis' Sykes says, "but what'll folks say here if we do go ahead and recognize them?"