Uncle Billy staggered to his feet and looked at Aunt Em'ly with amazement and indignation. He tried to speak but words failed him. She towered above him. There was something sinister and threatening about her--at least so the old man fancied. Aunt Em'ly was in reality merely standing up for the rights of her own especial white folks, but to the dazed old man she seemed like a symbolic figure of famine and disaster, lean and gaunt, pointing a long, bony finger at him. He followed her to the hall bedroom and deposited his burdens and then staggered down the stairs for the rest of Miss Ann's belongings. Poor Uncle Billy! His troubles were almost more than he could bear. Not that he personally minded getting up before dawn and flitting from Mrs. Betty Throckmorton's home before any member of the household was stirring. His Miss Ann had so willed it and far be it from him to object to her commands. Even going without breakfast was no hardship, if it so pleased his beloved mistress. The meal he had declared to Mrs. Bucknor they had eaten at a hotel on the way was purely imaginary. Crackers and cheese from a country store they had passed on their journey and a spray of black-heart cherries he had pulled from a tree by the wayside was all he and his mistress had eaten since the evening before at supper. That supper! Would he ever forget it? From the back porch steps he had heard the insults flung at Miss Ann by her hostess. Of course everybody who was anybody, or who had ever belonged to anybody, knew that Mrs. Elizabeth Throckmorton, known as Cousin Betty, was not really a member of the family but had merely married into it. According to Uncle Billy's geography she was not even an American, let alone a Kentuckian, since she had come from some foreign parts vaguely spoken of as New England. He and Miss Ann never had liked to visit there, but stopped on rare occasions when they felt that being an outsider her feelings might be hurt when she heard they had been in her neighborhood, had passed by her farm without paying their respects in the shape of a short visit.