the same you've been having. You're its only patron just now."

"Well, no. There's Mr. Mayrant."

"Not for a week yet, you remember."

So the wedding was on yet. Still, John might have smashed the owner of
the Hermana.

"Have you seen him lately?" I asked.

There was something special in the way she looked. "Not to-day. Have
you?"

"Never in the forenoon. He has his duties and I have mine."

She made a little pause, and then, "What do you think of the President?"

"The President?" I was at a loss.

"But I'm afraid you would take his view--the Northern view," she mused.

It gave me, suddenly, her meaning. "Oh, the President of the United
States! How you do change the subject!"

Her eyes were upon me, burning with sectional indignation, but she
seemed to be thinking too much to speak. Now, here was a topic that I
had avoided, and she had plumped it at me. Very well; she should have my
view.

"If you mean that a gentleman cannot invite any respectable member of
any race he pleases to dine privately in his house--"

"His house!" She was glowing now with it. "I think he is--I think
he is--to have one of them--and even if he likes it, not to
remember--cannot speak about him!" she wound up "I should say unbecoming
things." She had walked out, during these words, from behind the counter
and as she stood there in the middle of the long room you might have
thought she was about to lead a cavalry charge. Then, admirably, she
put it all under, and spoke on with perfect self-control. "Why can't
somebody explain it to him? If I knew him, I would go to him myself, and
I would say, Mr. President, we need not discuss our different tastes as
to dinner company. Nor need we discuss how much you benefit the colored
race by an act which makes every member of it immediately think that
he is fit to dine with any king in the world. But you are staying in
a house which is partly our house, ours, the South's, for we, too, pay
taxes, you know. And since you also know our deep feeling--you may even
call it a prejudice, if it so pleases you--do you not think that, so
long as you are residing in that house, you should not gratuitously
shock our deep feeling?" She swept a magnificent low curtsy at the air.

"By Jove, Miss La Heu!" I exclaimed, "you put it so that it's rather
hard to answer."

"I'm glad it strikes you so."

"But did it make them all think they were going to dine?"

"Hundreds of thousands. It was proof to them that