"Don't go," they said, when I sprang up; and they followed me into the hall. So there we were when the door opened, and everybody came crowding in. Mis' Sykes was ahead, and it came to me, when I saw how deathly pale she was, that a prejudice is a living thing, after all--not a dead thing; and that to them that are in its grasp, your heart has got to go out just as much as to them that suffer from it. I waved my hand to them all, promiscuous, crowding in with their baskets. "Neighbors," I says, "here's our new neighbors. Name yourselves gradual." They set their baskets in the hall, and came into the big room where the fire was. And I was kind of nervous, because our men are no good on earth at breaking the ice, except with a pick; and our women, when they get in a strange room, are awful apt to be so taken up looking round them that they forget to work up anything to say. But I needn't have worried. No sooner had we sat down than somebody spoke out, deep and full. Standing in the midst of us was Burton Fernandez, and it was him. And his voice went as a voice goes when it's got more to carry than just words, or just thoughts. "My friends," he said, "I cannot bear to have you put yourselves in a false position. When you came, perhaps you didn't know. I mean--did you think, perhaps, that we were of your race?" It was Mis' Sykes who answered him, grand and positive, and as if she was already thinking up her answer when she was born. "Certainly not," she says. "We were informed--all of us." Then I saw her get herself together for something tremenjus, that should leave no doubt in anybody's mind. "What of that?" says she. He stood still for a minute. He had deep-set eyes and a tired face that didn't do anything to itself when he talked. But his voice--that did. And when he began to speak again, it seemed to me that the voice of his whole race was coming through him. "My friends," he said, "how can we talk of other things when our minds are filled with just what this means to us?" We all kept still. None of us would have known how to say it, even if we had known what to say. He said: "I'm not speaking of the difficulties--they don't so much matter. Nothing matters--except that even when we have made the struggle, then we're despised no less. We don't often talk to you about it--it's the surprise of this--you must forgive me. But I want you to know that from the time I began my school life, there have been many who despised, and a few who helped, but never until to-night have there been any of your people with the look and word of neighbor--never once in our lives until to-night." In the silence that fell when he'd finished, I sat there knowing that even now it wasn't like he thought it was--and I wished that it had been so. He put his hand on his boy's shoulder. "It's for his sake," he said, "that I thank you most." Mis' Sykes was equal to that, too.