"To be sure," she answered, smiling. "As your grandfather said, 'It's necessary to have an Ethan in every generation to avoid re-marking things.' We'll have the knocker put up, if you like. Venie will polish it." "Shall I ask her please to come to you as soon as she's done her work?" he said, hesitatingly, for an interview with these black women was not yet lightly to be faced. "Tell her I want her at once," said his grandmother, a little brusquely. He was struck with her peremptoriness. "Sha'n't I say 'please'?" he inquired. "Certainly not. It's not as my servants please, but as I please. Tell her to come." Ethan knew now that his manner to Aunt Jerusha and her daughter must have appeared abject according to Gano standards. He secretly determined to adopt a loftier demeanor. Vain ambition! Never once in his life did he find the accent, let alone the conviction, of the superior, except with persons of his own station. Of servants he asked service unwillingly, and, to the end of his days, with an uneasy sense that somebody was being abased--he inclined to think it was himself. The wages question never in his estimation touched the heart of the obligation. Any underlining of the relation of master and servant was as irksome to him as if he had come of generations of communists, instead of a race of tyrannous slave-holders. Venie brightened up the knocker till it shone like gold, and Aunt Jerusha, who could do anything on earth, apparently, promised to come round and screw it firmly in its place at exactly the angle it had taken on the great white door "down South." It was over this business of the knocker that Ethan made friends with Aunt Jerusha. He was still mortally afraid of her, but he had come to that point where he was able to snatch a fearful joy in passing quite near her without flinching, as though she had been any ordinary white person, whose eyes didn't roll, and whose plaited wool didn't escape in little horns from under a flaming bandanna. He had insisted on carrying the tool-box and the hammer and the big screw-driver from the kitchen round to the front porch. It was so that his intention to be lofty and aloof had ended. At the front-door stood his grandmother. "You've got a lazy man's load," she said. And, as if on purpose to justify her, down dropped the screw-driver on the gravel, and out jumped the French grammar on the grass. He recovered the book, and as he reached after the screw-driver away slid the hammer off the tool-box. "Put down your book. Don't try to do so many things at once. That's how your great-uncle Rezin put out his eyes at Harper's Ferry, and Shelley lost his life trying to read and sail a boat at the same time."