"You can't!" chanted Ramsey. "She can have 'em for nothing but nobody can buy 'em."
"Pries'?" asked madame, "an' free pape'! W'at you pro-ose do with those pries' an' free pape'?"
"I'll marry her; marry her an' take her to whah a woman's a woman fo' a' that an' can clean house aw cook dinneh whilst I gatheh the honeycomb bright as gold and drive the wolf to his secret hold." He cast around the group a glance of bright inquiry, but except old Joy every one silently looked at every one else. The old woman softly closed her eyes and shook her head.
"Vote!" cried Ramsey, remembering Sunday's victory. "Let's vote on it!"
But the grandfather addressed the adventurer. "You'd rather not, I fancy."
"Rather not; looks too unanimous the wrong way."
"Would you still like to have Hugh's advice?"
"I would! I'd like to hear yo'-all's argument."
Ramsey dropped into her chair with a tired sigh and up-stream gaze though with an inner ear of keenest attention.
Hugh glanced toward his father's door, whence at any moment, as every one realized, the actor might beckon.
"You have," breathed a voice, unmistakably Ramsey's; "you always have."
"You know," he continued to the Kentuckian, "there's something in all of us, I don't say what, or whether wise or foolish, that says: 'Don't do it.' You feel it, don't you?"
Madame interrupted: "_Mais_ don't do w'at?"
Ramsey faced the group as if to answer just that question. "Now we pass between Cedar Point and Pecan Point and head for the Second Chickasaw Bluffs!"
"Ah bah, _les_ bloff'," murmured madame and repeated to Hugh: "Something say, 'Don' do it'? _Mais_ w'at it say don' do?"
"Don't mix the great races we know apart by their color."
"Umph! An' w'at is thad something w'at tell uz that?"
"Grandfather!" whimpered Ramsey, while madame asked:
"Of w'at race has Phylliz the conscien'? An' you would know Phylliz' race--ad sight--by the color?"
"I'd know it!" put in the Kentuckian. "She's white, to all intents and purposes."
"No," said Hugh, "not quite to all. Not to all as organized society, in its----"
Ramsey, with eyes up the river, sighed: "Mrs. Grundy?"
"Yes, but Mrs. Grundy in her best intents and purposes."
"In her race conscience," wailed Ramsey to the breeze.
Ramsey whipped around. "Thought you had no argument."