"Recognize him!" I cried. "Mis' Sykes—are you going to let him offer up his life, and go over to Europe and have his bravery recognized there, and then come back here and get the cold shoulder from you—are you? Then shame on us all!" I says.
Then Mis' Sykes said the things folks always say: "But if we recognize them, what about marriage?"
"See here," says I, "there's thousands and thousands of tuberculosis cases in this country to-day. And more hundreds of thousands with other diseases. Do we set the whole lot of them apart, and refuse to be decent to them, or do business with them, because they ought not to marry our girls and boys? Don't you see how that argument is just an excuse?"
"All the same," said Mis' Sykes, "it might happen."
"Then make a law against inter-marriage," I says. "That's easy. Nothing comes handier than making a new law. But don't snub the whole race—especially those that have risked their lives for you, Mis' Sykes!"
She stared at me, her face looking all triangular.
"It's for you to show them what to do," I pressed her. "They'll do what you do."
Mis' Sykes kind of stopped winking and breathing.
"I could make them do it, I bet you," she says, proud.
"Of course you could," I egged her on. "You could just take for granted everybody meant to be decent, and carry it off, matter-of-fact."