"It must have been just perfectly awfully horrible, Em," she said with a characteristic prodigality of adjectives when the other had finished her recital. "You just ought to give Aunt Sharley a piece of your mind about the way she behaves. And the worst of it is she gets worse all the time. Don't you think you're the only one she picks on. Why, don't you remember, Em, how just here only the other day she jumped on me because I went on the moonlight excursion aboard the _Sophie K. Foster_ with Sidney Baumann?--told me right to my face I ought to be spanked and put to bed for daring to run round with 'codfish aristocracy'--the very words she used. What 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.