"Judy, you take my breath away with such talk and such goings on. I can't bear to think of your selling things to negroes. There is no telling what might happen to you if you don't look out." Mrs. Buck had an instinctive dislike for the colored race. She never trusted them and was opposed even to employing them for farm work. She preferred the most disreputable poor white to the best negro. It was a prejudice inherited from her father and mother, who on first coming to Kentucky had done much talking about the down-trodden blacks, but being unable to understand them had never been able to get along with them. Old Dick Buck had said of Mr. and Mrs. Ezra Knight, "They've got mighty high ideas about negroes but they ain't got a bit of use for a nigger." Judith shared none of this prejudice. She liked colored people and they liked her and respected her. As she went speeding along the roads in her little blue car, there was never a darkey old or young who did not wish her well and bow low to her friendly greeting. Only that morning she had given a lift to a bent old man who was on his way to Mr. Big Josh Bucknor's, and thereby saved him many a weary mile. "I'd take you all the way, Uncle Peter, but I can't trust my left hind tire up that bumpy lane," Judith explained. "Ain't it the truf, Missy? If Mr. Big Josh would jes stop talkin' 'bout it an' buil' hisse'f a road! He been lowin' he wa' gonter git busy an' backgammon that lane fer twenty-five years an he ain't never tech it yit. That's the reason they done sent fer me. The ladies in the fambly air done plum wo' out what with cookin' fer comp'ny an' washin' up an' all. It looks like comp'ny air the only thing what don't balk at that there lane. They done sint a hurry call fer ol' Peter, kase they got a notion Miss Ann Peyton air on the way. They phoned down ter the sto' fer me ter put my foot in the pike an' come erlong. They done got a phome message from way over yonder at Throckmorton's that dus' from Miss Ann's coach wa' a risin'. They ain't mo'n got shet er a batch er visitings when here come news that Miss Ann air a comin'. The ladies air sho' peeved an' they done up an' said they ain't a gonter stay home an' Mr. Big Josh tell 'em ter go 'long if they's a min' an' he'n me'll look arfter Miss Ann." "But she is at Buck Hill," said Judith. "I am sure of it. I saw her carriage turning in there this morning. Poor old lady!" "I ain't seein' that she air so po'." "It seems very pitiful to me for her never to be wanted, always coming and always having to pack up and leave. I'd love to have her come visit me. You know she and I are of the same blood, Uncle Peter--or did you know it?" "Land's sake, Missy, I mus' a made a mistake. I been a thinkin' all along that I wa' a ridin' with ol' Dick Buck's gran'baby. You mus' scuse me." "So you are, Uncle Peter, I am Judith Buck, but I have just as good a right to be Judith Bucknor as Mr. Bob Bucknor or Mr. Big Josh Bucknor, or any of them."