"I'm giving grandfather's," said the grandson.
"Humph! it's yours. I'd know it at sight--by the color."
"Miss Ramsey," said the old man, toying with his cane, "Hugh and I have been finding that, right or wrong, Mrs. Grundy or Mr. Grundy, race conscience is a wonderful, unaccountable thing for which men will give their life-blood by thousands." His voice failed. He waved smilingly to Hugh.
"And when," broke in Hugh to Ramsey, "when Mrs. Grundy, in her race conscience, says Phyllis is not white no one ought to snap his fingers in even Mrs. Grundy's face merely to please himself or to relieve some private situation."
Ramsey stood up, flashing first on him and then to her mother, dropped again, and with her face in her elbow on the chair's back recited drearily--from her third reader:
"You can hear him swing his heavy sledge With measured beat and slow, Like the sexton ringing the village bell When the evening sun----"
"Ramzee!" exclaimed madame, while the old nurse groaned: "Oh, Lawd 'a' massy!"
The girl rose, laughed, and flashed again: "Well, if Phyllis ain't white what is she? She's got to be something!"
"Yes," said the youth, "but not everything. I know her wrongs. But none of us, with whatever rights and wrongs, can have, or do, or be----"
"Oh, don't we know all that?" Ramsey turned to the grandfather and with sudden deference sprang to help him rise. He faced her and the Californian together.
"Miss Ramsey, Hugh has all your feelings in this matter."
Madame, "California," and old Joy eagerly assented.
"But poor, blundering old Mrs. Grundy, always wronging some one," the old man smilingly continued, "is really fighting hard for a better human race. That's the greatest battle she can fight, my dear young lady, and when----"
"Well," rejoined Ramsey with eyes frankly tearful, "she fights it mighty badly."
"Ah, a hundred times worse than you think. Yet we who presume to fight the blunders of that battle must fight them unselfishly and to help her win."
Old Joy groaned so approvingly that he turned to her.
"Who, me? Lawd, I thinks mighty little an' I knows less. Yit one thing I does know: Phyllis ain' gwine. She know' you cayn't make her white by takin' her to whah it make' no odds ef she ain't white. Phyllis love' folks. She love' de quality, she love' de crowd. White aw black aw octoroom free niggeh, Phyllis gwine to choose de old Hayle home and de great riveh--full o' steamboat'--sooneh'n any lan' whah de ain't mo'n one 'oman to de mile. Phyllis ain't gwine."