unconsciously worn the dim frown that seemed to her so
droll because at once so scrutinous yet so appealing.

To others that faint shade had never meant more than an inborn mental
painstaking; a mind as steadily at work as the pulse; seemingly
sluggish, really active. But Ramsey, in her stateroom, letting Joy dress
her for all the Sabbath could mean afloat or ashore, could not accept
such a thought. A feminine eagerness to read the masculine brow had
promptly imputed to Hugh's a depth of mystery for which her romantic
young soul demanded a romantic interpretation. Hence, mainly, her hunger
for the story of the _Quakeress_. She had perceived, she thought, a
relation between it and the clouded brow, and was bent on finding for
the brow's owner as amazing a part in the tale as could be contrived by
any piecing together of its facts which did not absolutely mutilate
them. And these facts already she had begun to collect when by the
mention of this "Phyllis" she discovered that old Joy had at least a
share of the facts and under due pressure would yield them up.

"Phyllis?" asked Ramsey, "who was Phyllis?"

"Humph! Neveh hear o' Phyllis? Well, dey wuz reason fo' dat, too.
Phyllis wuz de likeliest yalleh gal I eveh see, not-in-standin' she wuz
my full fus' cousin."

Now, one could be as dark as a sloe and yet have a cousin as yellow as a
marigold, but Ramsey did not see it so. "How can that be?" she laughed,
"when you are so out and out black?" The bare idea seemed too comical
for human endurance.

"I ain't no blackeh'n Gawd made me--oh, Lawd! missie, how I gwine button
you up ef you shif' an' wriggle like dat? Phyllis wuz nuss to all de
Co'teney chil'en. 'Caze dat same day when de new _Quak'ess_ come down de
riveh wid dis same Mahs' Hugh, new-bawn, dah wuz yo' pa on his new boat,
de _Conjuror_----"

"Ow! the _Conqueror_!"

"Yass'm, dat's what I say. And dah wuz yo' ma, an' me, o' co'se, and dah
wuz Phyllis, my full fus' cousin--now, ef you cayn't stop a-gigglin' an'
wrigglin' long enough fo' me to finish dis----"

Ramsey was too unnerved to heed. "How could--" she insisted--"how could
a--a mulatto girl be your first cousin?"

"Now, you dess neveh min' how! Phyllis wa'n't no mullatteh, nohow. She
wuz a quadroom! Heh mullatteh motheh wuz my own sisteh!"

"Oh, you mean half-sister!"

"I means whole sisteh! Miss Hayle, betteh you dess drap dat subjic' now,
an' thaynk Gawd fo' yo' ign'ance!"

"All right! all right!