Though above such pastime as flirtation, America had more offers than any other girl in her set. Her low, slow voice never recounted these conquests, but the victims published themselves, wondering whom America Poynton would marry, since she was so hard to suit. When she accepted Ross Carr, therefore, the astonishment was general. He was good enough for some girls, but hardly good enough for America Poynton. He had also been a wild youth, but people said he was settling down. The Carrs ranked somewhat below the Poyntons, and Ross had no plantation of his own. Yet when the community thought it over, they were willing to accept him as America’s husband if he proved a credit to her. “Miss Maria,” said Nancy, coming to the door with a face full of meaning, “Miss Becky Inchbald’s done lighted down by the quarters, and tied her horse.” “What does she want?” inquired Mrs. Poynton, disturbed. “Dunno, Miss Maria.” “Why doesn’t she come to the house?” “She hardly ever came to the house in her best days,” murmured the judge’s wife. “Perhaps she’s sick,” continued Mrs. Poynton. “Some of you run and see.” “Peachy done been down to her, and she say she just waitin’ there in the shade. Miss Becky got her baby ’long with her.” The general’s wife heard this with rising dignity. “Don’t annoy her,” she commanded. “Let the poor girl alone.” “Law, Miss Maria, nobody won’t say nothin’ to Miss Becky. But all the little niggehs has come out to look at her.” “Go yourself and see if she needs anything.” “I have heard,” remarked Miss Vandewater, through the silence which followed, “that Becky Inchbald, for all she was so close-mouthed at first, threatens now to carry her child to its father.” Mrs. Poynton, with an instant’s pause on the subject, hoped he could be found and made to do his duty. The judge’s wife heard with a mere lifting of the eyebrows. She thought it scarcely a fit topic to mention before America. But America’s plane was so much above Becky Inchbald that she had never even disapproved of the girl. Becky Inchbald’s people were not poor whites, for they owned land and slaves; but their raw unfitness for encountering the old stock held them on the verge of society. That Becky was uneducated was her own fault. She had become the mother of a hapless baby and the scandal of the neighborhood before America Poynton’s engagement was announced. “She’s spiteful about that baby,” pursued Miss Sally. “There’ll be trouble somewhere before sundown, if she’s started out with it.” “I do not see that Inchbald’s affairs need disturb us,” suggested the judge’s wife, making dimples at the finger roots of one hand as she smoothed her polished hair. “Some women are never disturbed about any of the sin in the world,” said Miss Vandewater incisively, “until it comes into their houses and takes their children by the throat.”