the black woman gathering up the towels which had been bleaching on the grass.

“Hi, dar, Miss Glen, honey, yo’ procative right in de house!” Phemie greeted her with a husky shout. “Yo’ all got comp’ny! Miss Ada, she lookin’ fo’ you ebery minnit!”

Company? Little company came to the dull house of the doctor’s choosing. Some connection of her companion’s, no doubt.... At the steps of the rear porch Glen stood still and faced him.

“Luke, I’m so sorry! Sorry and—ashamed! I don’t know what to say to you.”

“There’s only one thing to say to me,” he said, doggedly, his face dark. “That you’ll marry me, as you’ve always meant to! As you promised your father! What’s come over you, to make you——”

“Oh, Luke, I don’t know, myself!” the girl broke[88] in, desperately. “I’m so proud of you, and so devoted to you, and Dad——”

[88]

He took imperious hold of her again without a backward glance at the negress, pottering about the mean little backyard. “It’s no use talking and explaining!” he said roughly. “For five years I’ve waited, and——”

With a scared glance at the house and another at Phemie, still stooping over her towels which flapped teasingly in the wind, Glen pulled herself free. “Oh, then you can—you will—wait a little longer, Luke! Why”—she caught at a straw of defense—“you’re always telling me to wait about the mill, and the children, and all the hands, and making me be patient! Now I’m begging you to wait—to be patient with me, just a little while, Luke!”

“How long?”

“Why—why—how can I tell, how long, exactly? Until I—until— You see, Luke, I can’t explain, but I’m not ready! Dad wanted me to wait, and——”

“Till you were nineteen or twenty, he said. Well, you’re nineteen.”

“I know. Oh, I know how silly and—and disloyal I seem, but if you’ll just trust me!”

He caught her slim young shoulders again in an iron grip. “Anybody else? Look at me. Look at me, I say! Is there anybody else?”

[89]She met his furious eyes with the sad candor of her own. “No one, Luke. You know that.” The black woman, her bright calico apron heaped high with the towels, passed them and went into the kitchen and she paused until the door had closed behind her. “I—I admire you, and 

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