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Beaten and discomfited, with one hand up to a burning cheek, Emmy Lou returned to her young man. On his face was a queer smile.

“Did–did you hear what she said?” she asked, bending over him.

“Not being deaf I couldn’t well help hearing. I imagine the people next door heard it, too, and are no doubt now enjoying the joke of it.”

“Oh, I know she’s impossible,” admitted Emmy Lou, repeating her lament of a little while before, but taking care even in her mortification to keep her voice discreetly down. “There’s no use trying to do anything with her. We’ve tried and tried and tried, but she just will have her way. She doesn’t seem to understand that we’ve grown up–Mildred and I. She still wants to boss us just as she did when we were children. And she grows more crotchety and more exacting every day.”

“And I–poor benighted Yank that I am–came down here filled with a great and burning sympathy for the down-trodden African.” Harvey said this as though speaking to himself.

The girl forgot her annoyance in her instinct to come to the defence of her black mentor.

“Oh, but she has been like a mother to us! After mamma died I don’t know what we should have done–two girls left alone in this old house–if it hadn’t been for Aunt Sharley. She petted us, she protected us, she nursed us when we were sick. Why, Harvey, she couldn’t have been more loyal or more devoted or more self-sacrificing than she has been through all these years while we were growing up. I know she loves us with every drop of blood in her veins. I know she’d work her fingers to the bone for us–that she’d die in her tracks fighting for us. We try to remember the debt of gratitude we owe her now that she’s getting old and fussy and unreasonable and all crippled with rheumatism.”

She paused, and then, womanlike, she added a qualifying clause: “But I must admit she’s terribly aggravating at times. It’s almost unbearable to have her playing the noisy old tyrant day in and day out. I get awfully out of patience with her.”

Over on Franklin Street the town clock struck.

“Six o’clock,” said Harvey. Reluctantly he stirred and sat up in the hammock and reached for his hat.

“I could be induced, you know, if sufficiently pressed, to stay on for supper,” he hinted. For one Northern born, young Mr. Harvey Winslow was fast learning the hospitable customs of the town of his recent adoption.

“I’d love to have you stay,” stated Emmy Lou, “but–but”–she glanced over her shoulder toward the open door–“but I’m afraid of Auntie. She might say she wasn’t prepared to entertain a visitor–‘not fixed fur company’ is the way she would put it. You see, she regards you as a person of great importance. That’s why she’s putting on so many airs now. If it was one of the home boys that I’ve known always that was here with me she wouldn’t mind it a bit. But with you it’s different, and she’s on her dignity–riding her high horse. You aren’t very much disappointed, are you? Besides, you’re coming to supper to-morrow night. She’ll fuss over you then, I know, and be on tiptoe to see that everything is just exactly right. I think Auntie likes you.”

“Curious way she has of showing it then,” said Harvey. “I guess I still have a good deal to learn about the quaint and interesting tribal customs of this country. Even so, my education is progressing by leaps and bounds–I can see that.”

After further remarks delivered in a confidential undertone, the purport of which is none of our business, young Mr. Winslow took his departure from the Dabney homestead. Simultaneously the vigilant warder abandoned her post in the front hall and returned to her special domain at the back of the house. Left alone, the girl sat on the porch with her troubled face cupped in her hands and a furrow of perplexity spoiling her smooth white brow. Presently the gate latch clicked and her sister, a year and a half her junior, came up the walk. With half an eye anyone would have known them for sisters. They looked alike, which is another way of saying both of them were pretty and slim and quick in their movements.