"Just for a minute," said Mary Louise, refusing the proffered chair and giving the room a hasty, critical look. Even in that critical look she could find naught to criticize. The cabin was a small three-room affair, set back from the street, between two vacant old storehouses. Zeke had whitewashed it without and calcimined it within, and with the free air that circulated the place this treatment was enough to make the front rooms passable. Over the iron mantel hung Zeke's "Knights of Macabre" sword in its scabbard. Mary Louise looked for the white-plumed hat but it had evidently been put away. On the left wall, in a brilliant gilt frame, hung a coloured portrait of Admiral Dewey. The artist had in some way inspired a look of malign cunning on the face by shifting the position of the left eye a hair's breadth below normal, but the mouth and smile were benign. On a table to the right reposed a glass case with a base of felt and a rounded top--the mausoleum for an ancient bird creature that looked like a prairie chicken, very droopy and, in spite of its interment, quite dingy with dust. It was vaguely familiar to her somehow. Zenie was watching the inspection with an eager, expectant look. When Mary Louise had apparently finished and turned to her again, she smiled. "You ain' eveh see ouh house befo', is you?" Mary Louise admitted she never had. And then to disarm any suspicion that she might have come for social reasons only, she attacked the matter in hand with characteristic vigour: "Zeke's not home much, is he?" "Right smaht he ain', no'm." Zenie's face was all expectant smiles. Not a shadow seemed to linger near it. Mary Louise allowed her gaze to travel about the room. In the entire atmosphere of the place was no besmirching suggestion of toil. She returned again to Zenie. The latter was like some tropical flower in full bloom. She began, selecting carefully her ground: "You haven't any place to put your baby, no one to watch him while you work, have you?" This was spoken with all the force of conviction. Zenie's face wreathed itself in another smile. "I ain' do no mo' wuk--not ontil Zeke he come home." Mary Louise paused and drew breath. She began again: "If there was somewhere you could put him, someone who could look out for him, or if it was so that you could keep an eye on him yourself--why, you could go to work again, like you used to." The brightness of Zenie's smile began to fade. "Yas'm. Yas'm, reckon I could." She turned her attention to the child in her arms and her voice, as she continued, was liquid soft. "Zeke's doin' so good--I ain' aim to wuk out no mo'. Jes' keep house heah fo' him." Then Mary Louise, sensing defeat, struck; struck unerringly for her objective which she judged to be the vulnerable spot; struck with characteristic vigour and direct: "I'll give you six dollars a week if you'll come and do the cooking for Miss Susie, for this summer." She paused and observed the effect.