He was going to accept. “I shall be—”
he had begun, in tones of gratification, when in one
instant his face was stricken with complete dismay.
“I had forgotten,” he said; and this time
he was gone indeed, and in a hurry most apparent.
It resembled a flight.
What was the matter now? You will naturally think
that it was an appointment with his ladylove which
he had forgotten; this was certainly my supposition
as I turned again to the front door. There stood
one of the waitresses, glaring with her white eyes
half out of her black face at the already distant
back of John Mayrant.
“Oh!” I thought; but, before I could think
any more, the tall, dreadful boarder—the
lady whom I secretly called Juno—swept up
the steps, and by me into the house, with a dignity
that one might term deafening.
The waitress now muttered, or rather sang, a series
of pious apostrophes. “Oh, Lawd, de rampages
and de ructions! Oh, Lawd, sinner is in my way,
Daniel!” She was strongly, but I think pleasurably,
excited; and she next turned to me with a most natural
grin, and saying, “Chick’n’s mos’
gone, sah,” she went back to the dining room.
This admonition sent me upstairs to make as hasty
a toilet as I could.
Each recent remarkable occurrence had obliterated
its predecessor, and it was with difficulty that I
made a straight parting in my hair. Had it been
Miss Rieppe that John so suddenly ran away to?
It seemed now more as if the boy had been running
away from somebody. The waitress had stared at
him with extraordinary interest; she had seen his bruise;
perhaps she knew how he had got it. Her excitement—had
he smashed up his official superior at the custom
house? That would be an impossible thing, I told
myself instantly; as well might a nobleman cross swords
with a peasant. Perhaps the stare of the waitress
had reminded him of his bruise, and he might have
felt disinclined to show himself with it in a company
of gossiping strangers. Still, that would scarcely
account for it—the dismay with which he
had so suddenly left me. Was Juno the cause—she
had come up behind me; he must have seen her and her
portentous manner approaching—had the boy
fled from her?
And then, his fierce outbreak about taking orders
from a negro when I was moralizing over the misfortune
of marrying a jackass! I got a sort of parting
in my hair, and went down to the dining room.
Juno was there before me, with her bonnet, or rather
her headdress, still on, and I heard her making apologies
to Mrs. Trevise for being so late. Mrs. Trevise,
of course, sat at the head of her table, and Juno sat
at her right hand. I was very glad not to have
a seat near Juno, because this lady was, as I have
already hinted, an intolerable person to me.
Either her Southern social position or her rent (she
took the whole second floor, except Mrs. Trevise’s
