Yes, she done it magnificent. Mis' Sykes carried the day, high-handed. I couldn't but remember, as I slipped out, how in Winter she wears ear-muffs till we've all come to consider going without them is affected.
I ran across the street, still in that golden, pouring light. In the Oldmoxon House was a surprise. Sitting with Mrs. Fernandez before the little light May fire, was her husband, and a slim, tall girl in a smoky brown dress, that was their daughter, home from her school to see her brother. Then the soldier boy came in. Even yet I can't talk much about him: A slight, silent youth, that had left his senior year at college to volunteer in the army, and had come home now to take up his life as best he could; and on the breast of his uniform shone the little cross, won by saving his white captain, under fire.
I sat with them before their hearth, but I didn't half hear what they said. I was looking at the room, and at the four quiet folks that had done so much for themselves—more than any of us in the village, in proportion—and done it on paths none of us had ever had to walk. And the things I was thinking made such a noise I couldn't pay attention to just the talk. Over and over it kept going through my head: In fifty years. In fifty years!
At last came the stir and shuffle I'd been waiting for and the door-bell rang.
"Don't go," they said, when I sprang up; and they followed me into the hall. So there we were when the door opened, and everybody came crowding in.
Mis' Sykes was ahead, and it came to me, when I saw how deathly pale she was, that a prejudice is a living thing, after all—not a dead thing; and that to them that are in its grasp, your heart has got to go out just as much as to them that suffer from it.
I waved my hand to them all, promiscuous, crowding in with their baskets.
"Neighbors," I says, "here's our new neighbors. Name yourselves gradual."
They set their baskets in the hall, and came into the big room where the fire was. And I was kind of nervous, because our men are no good on earth at breaking the ice, except with a pick; and our women, when they get in a strange room, are awful apt to be so taken up looking round them that they forget to work up anything to say.
But I needn't have worried. No sooner had we sat down than somebody spoke out, deep and full. Standing in the midst of us was Burton Fernandez, and it was him. And his voice went as a voice goes when it's got more to carry than just words, or just thoughts.