Aunt Claudia was away for three weeks.

"I wish she would come home," young Paine said one morning to his
mother.

"Why?" Caroline Paine was at her desk with her mind on the dinner.
"Why, Randy?"

"Oh, Dalton's going there a lot."

Mrs. Paine headed her list with gumbo soup. "Do you think he goes to
see Becky?"

"Does a duck swim? Of course he goes there to see her, and he's
turning her head."

"He is enough to turn any woman's head. He has nice eyes." Mrs. Paine
left the topic as negligible, and turned to more important things.

"Randy, would you mind picking a few pods of okra for the soup? Susie
is so busy and Bob and Jefferson are both in the field."

"Certainly, Mother," his cool answer gave no hint of the emotions which
were seething within him. Becky's fate was hanging in the balance, and
his mother talked of okra! He had decided some weeks ago that boarders
were disintegrating--and that a mother was not a mother who had three
big meals a day on her mind.

He went into the garden. An old-fashioned garden, so common at one
time in the South--with a picket fence, a little gate, orderly paths--a
blaze of flowers to the right, and to the left a riot of
vegetables--fat tomatoes weighing the vines to the ground, cucumbers
hiding under their sheltering leaves, cabbages burgeoning in
blue-green, and giving the promise of unlimited boiled dinners, onions
enough to flavor a thousand delectable dishes, sweet corn running in
countless rows up the hill, carrots waving their plumes, Falstaffian
watermelons. It was evident with the garden as an index that the
boarders at King's Crest were fed on more than milk and honey.

Randy picked the okra and carried it to the kitchen, and returning to
the Schoolhouse found the Major opening his morning mail.

Randy sat down on the step. "Once upon a time," he said, "we had
niggers to work in our gardens. And now we are all niggers."

The Major's keen eyes studied him. "What's the matter?"

"I've been picking okra--for soup, and I'm a Paine of King's Crest."

"Well, you peeled potatoes in France."

"That's different."

"Why should it be different? If a thing is for the moment your job you
are never too big for it."

"I wish I had stayed in the Army. I wish I had never come back."

The Major whistled for a moment, thoughtfully. Then he said, "Look
here, Paine, hadn't you better talk about it?"

"Talk about what?"

"That's for you to tell me. The