ich
should be done might be neither of them could decide, and so they went
to bed and to sleep.

And the next day was another day exactly similar in its petty annoyances
to the day before.

But a day was to come before the summer ended when a way out was found.
The person who found the way out--or thought he did--was Mr. Harvey
Winslow, the hero or villain of the hammock episode previously described
in this narrative. He did not venture, though, to suggest a definite
course of action until after a certain moonlit, fragrant night, when two
happy young people agreed that thereafter these twain should be one.

Mildred knew already what was impending in the romance of Emmy Lou. So
perhaps did Aunt Sharley. Her rheumatism had not affected her eyesight
and she had all her faculties. All the same, it was to Aunt Sharley that
Emmy Lou went next morning to tell of the choice she had made. There was
no one whose consent had actually to be obtained. Both the girls were
of age; as their own master they enjoyed the use and control of their
cosy little inheritance. Except for an aunt who lived in New Orleans and
some cousins scattered over the West, they were without kindred. The
Dabneys had been an old family, but not a large one. Nevertheless, in
obedience to a feeling that told her Aunt Sharley should be the first,
next only to her sister, to share with her the happiness that had come
into her life, Emmy Lou sought out the old woman before breakfast time.

Seemingly Aunt Sharley approved. For if at the moment she mumbled out a
complaint about chillens too young to know their own minds being prone
to fly off with the first young w'ite gen'l'man that came along frum
nobody knowed whar, still there was nothing begrudged or forced about
the vocal jubilations with which she made the house ring during the
succeeding week. At prayer meeting on Wednesday night at Zion Coloured
Baptist Church and at lodge meeting on Friday night she bore herself
with an air of triumphant haughtiness which sorely irked her fellow
members. It was agreed privily that Sis' Charlotte Helm got mo' and mo'
bigotty, and not alone that, but mo' and mo' uppety, ever' day she
lived.

If young Mr. Winslow had been, indirectly, the cause for her prideful
deportment before her own colour, it was likewise Mr. Winslow who
shortly was to be the instrument for humbling her into the dust. Now
this same Mr. Winslow, it should be stated, was a masterful young man.
Only a