! How'd you happen to be so early? Maybe if we stay
right out here, where the children won't know where we are, we can have
a few minutes quite to ourselves. Toucle is going to get tea tonight.
Neale, sit down a minute. I want to tell you something. I'm awfully
upset. I went over to help Mr. Welles transplant his Brussels sprouts,
and we got to talking. Neale, what do you suppose has been in his mind
all this time we've been thinking him so happy and contented here?"

"Doesn't he like Crittenden's? Find it dull?"

"No, no, not that, a bit. He _loves_ it. It's heart-breaking to see how
much he loves it!" She stopped, her voice shaking a little, and waited
till she could get it under control. Her husband took her stained, dusty
hand in his. She gave his fingers a little pressure, absently, not
noting what she did, and seeing the corner of his handkerchief showing
in the pocket of his shirt, she pulled it out with a nervous jerk, and
wiped her face all over with it.

He waited in silence.

"Listen, Neale, I know it will sound perfectly crazy to you, at first.
But you might as well believe it, for he is serious. It seems he's been
getting lots more letters from that niece or cousin of his, down in
Georgia. She tells him about things, how the Negroes are treated, all
the Jim Crow business carried into every single detail of every single
minute of every single day. It seems they're not badly treated as long
as they'll stay day-laborers or servants, but . . . oh well, there's no
need to go on with telling you . . . _you_ know. We all know well enough
what the American attitude is. Only I didn't think it could be so bad,
or so everlastingly kept up every minute, as this cousin tells him. I
suppose she ought to know. She's lived there for forty years. She keeps
citing instances she's seen." Marise broke out with a fierce, blaming
sharpness, "I don't see what _business_ she had, writing him that way. I
think it was beastly of her. Why couldn't she let him alone!"

She felt her husband waiting patiently for her to quiet down and go on
more coherently, and knew that his patience came from a long
acquaintance with her mental habits, a certainty that her outbursts of
feeling generally did quiet down if one waited: and across her genuine
absorption in the story she was telling there flitted, bat-like, a
distaste far being known so well as all that! There was something
indiscreet and belittling in it, she thought, with an inward fa