"You don't believe," Mrs. Pickens spoke a little hesitatingly, "you don't think, Dick, that they're our brothers in Christ?" "No," he roared in answer, "they're no brothers of mine, the dirty, big-lipped, splay-footed bucks. What are you giving me? Want me to take 'em into my parlor, marry 'em to my sisters----" "Oh, come!" said Mrs. Pickens, with a little laugh, "I'm a southerner, you know! You don't have to talk that stuff to me." "Well, and ain't I a southerner? No, I'm nothing but a cheap Georgia cracker, that's what I am. But I ain't a nigger lover, anyway. Pretty way to talk to a feller, ain't it, now?" he said, facing Mrs. Pickens, the anger dying in his eyes. "It was very unkind; I don't wonder you're angry." Then she added, looking keenly at him, "If she thinks that way about you, why don't you give her up?" "Oh, don't say that!" The lad's whole appearance changed, his mouth softened, the tears started to his eyes. He gripped the table and looked at his woman friend as though she had struck him a blow. "I couldn't stand that. I love her so." "But you know, Dick," there was a teasing smile on Mrs. Pickens' face, "an attractive girl like Hertha is sure to have a lot of beaus, and she can't marry all of them." "There isn't anybody else; you can see for yourself there isn't anybody else. I've got to have her. I'll go to the devil if I don't!" He was so changed, so shaken with feeling, that Mrs. Pickens took the hand that hung by his side and patted it. And then to her amazement and her happiness, for it was good to mother this long-legged piece of masculinity, she found the boy kneeling by her side, his head buried on her shoulder. "I suppose," he said, looking up after a minute and blinking, "she had an old black mammy that took care of her and loved her and that she loved. Perhaps," contemptuously, "she played with nigger babies when they were cute and small. Nigger babies can be awful cute." Mrs. Pickens smoothed his ruffled hair, but said nothing. "Well, I'm a Georgia cracker," he declared next, with desperate calmness, "and she's right in thinking I come cheap." "She didn't mean it like that!" "I don't know what she meant," he went on wearily. "I don't half understand her. The only time we get along together is when neither of us says a word." Mrs. Pickens laughed, and Dick, rising sheepishly to his feet, walked to the open window. When he turned back he seemed his usual self again. "I'll be out of the way soon enough now," he said. "I'm off on the road to-morrow." "Yes, dear." "You couldn't go to her room by and by, could you, and tell her I'm sorry I made such a rumpus?" "Of course. And I will say, Dick, that I think this time she is as much to blame as you. You only ran down the darkies, but she----"