Although unable to read, Aunt Susan’s manner of counting and making change had the accuracy of a primitive Chinese abacus-Pythagoricus. On the mantelshelf she kept a blue bowl half-filled with grains of corn. If a dollar bill were given in settlement of an account, grains of corn equalling the amount of the bill were counted out on the table. Then the strokes on the wall were counted, and as many grains of corn were taken from the whole; the remaining grains representing the change to be returned. Fortunately, the patrons seldom presented her with anything higher than a two dollar bill. However slow the process, the method was sure; and even though she had to change a five dollar note now and then, no one ever complained of wrong count. Aunt Susan was a kindly, soft-voiced, full-bosomed woman, about sixty years old. She had no family of her own; but living with her, as a sort of charge, was a blind man named Tom Lakes, some twenty years her junior. She had known Tom from his early childhood, and had always taken a motherly interest in him; mending his clothes, cooking his meals, and taking care of his money for him, long before he married and met with the horrible accident which caused his blindness. Tom married a young woman who came to the village a stranger,—“some wile Georgia nigger out de wilderness,” as she was called by Tom’s friends, few of whom had any regard for her because of her arrogance and “scawnful ways.” After his marriage, Tom continued to pay his daily visits to Aunt Susan; helping her peel potatoes, clean crabs for the gumbo, chop wood, and redden the floor with brick-dust; just as he had always done. These little attentions awakened a feeling of resentment in the suspicious mind of the scornful Georgia lady. Tom was kind to her and provided for every humble need; but why must he go and do work for another woman?... And his visits at night; going to take part in the singing and story-telling with other people before Susan’s fireplace;—another thorn in her jealous soul. Every invitation from Tom to go along with him, she refused; preferring to remain at home, brooding and wondering. She was sure something more than “ole lady” interest held Tom to Aunt Susan. No woman kept a man’s money unless there was something secret between them,—and the man with a “natchal wife of his own”.... “Who? Do I look like I got any green in my eye, keep me from seein’ w’at direction de win’ blowin’ in?—Tom mus’ be take me for a fool!” So she mused to herself when he was away by day; brooding deeper on the seeming deception when he was away at night revelling in the pleasant flow of song and story and the wholesome regalement of crab gumbo and sweet potato pie.