a Northerner!"

His face, as he said this, was a single glittering piece of fierceness.
I was still so much taken aback that I said rather flatly: "But who has
to?"

"I have to." With this he abruptly turned on his heel and left me
standing on the steps. For a moment I stared after him; and then, as I
rang the bell, he was back again; and with that formality which at times
overtook him he began: "I will ask you to excuse my hasty--"

"Oh, John Mayrant! What a notion!"

But he was by no means to be put off, and he proceeded with stiffer
formality: "I feel that I have not acted politely just now, and I beg to
assure you that I intended no slight."

My first impulse was to lay a hand upon his shoulder and say to him:
"My dear fellow, stuff and nonsense!" Thus I should have treated any
Northern friend; but here was no Northerner. I am glad that I had
the sense to feel that any careless, good-natured putting away of his
deliberate and definitely tendered apology would seem to him a "slight"
on my part. His punctilious value for certain observances between
man and man reached me suddenly and deeply, and took me far from the
familiarity which breeds contempt.

"Why, John Mayrant," I said, "you could never offend me unless I thought
that you wished to, and how should I possibly think that?"

"Thank you," he replied very simply.

I rang the bell a second time. "If we can get into the house," I
suggested, "won't you stop and dine with me?"

He was going to accept. "I shall be--" he had begun, in tones of
gratification, when in one instant his face was stricken with complete
dismay. "I had forgotten," he said; and this time he was gone indeed,
and in a hurry most apparent. It resembled a flight.

What was the matter now? You will naturally think that it was an
appointment with his ladylove which he had forgotten; this was certainly
my supposition as I turned again to the front door. There stood one of
the waitresses, glaring with her white eyes half out of her black face
at the already distant back of John Mayrant.

"Oh!" I thought; but, before I could think any more, the tall, dreadful
boarder--the lady whom I secretly called Juno--swept up the steps, and
by me into the house, with a dignity that one might term deafening.

The waitress now muttered, or rather sang, a series of pious
apostrophes. "Oh, Lawd, de rampages and de ructions! Oh, Lawd, sinner is
in my way, Daniel!" She was strongly, but I think pleasurably