t right has she, I want to know, to be criticising
Sidney Baumann's people? I'm sure he's as nice a boy as there is in this
whole town; seems to me he deserves all the more credit for working his
way up among the old families the way he has. I don't care if his father
was a nobody in this town when he first came here.

"Quality folks--quality folks! She's always preaching about our being
quality folks and about it being wrong for us to demean ourselves by
going with anybody who isn't quality folks until I'm sick and tired of
the words. She has quality folks on the brain! Does she think we are
still babies? You're nearly twenty-three and I'm past twenty-one. We
have our own lives to live. Why should we be so----"

She broke off at the sound of a limping footstep in the hall.

"Supper's ready," announced Aunt Sharley briefly. "You chillen come
right in an' eat it whilst it's hot."

Strangely quiet, the two sisters followed the old negress back to the
dining room. Aunt Sharley, who had prepared the meal, now waited upon
them. She was glumly silent herself, but occasionally she broke, or
rather she punctuated, the silence with little sniffs of displeasure.
Only once did she speak, and this was at the end of the supper, when she
had served them with blackberries and cream.

"Seem lak de cat done got ever'body's tongue round dis place to-night!"
she snapped, addressing the blank wall above the older girl's head.
"Well, 'tain't no use fur nobody to be poutin' an' sullin'. 'Tain't
gwine do 'em no good. 'Tain't gwine budge me nary hair's brea'th frum
whut I considers to be my plain duty. Ef folkses don't lak it so much de
wuss fur dem, present company not excepted. Dat's my say an' I done said
it!"

And out of the room she marched with her head held defiantly high.

That night there were callers. At the Dabney home there nearly always
were callers of an evening, for the two sisters were by way of being
what small-town society writers call reigning belles. Once, when they
had first returned from finishing school the year before, a neighbouring
lady, meeting Aunt Sharley on the street, had been moved to ask whether
the girls had many beaus, and Aunt Sharley, with a boastful flirt of her
under lip which made her side face look something like the profile of a
withered but vainglorious dromedary, had answered back:

"Beaus? Huh! Dem chillens is got beaus frum ever' state!" Which was a
slight overstretching of the real facts,