little woman if it was going to shine. But if you
wanted to know the time, it couldn't tell you nearer than the hour before
last of the day before yesterday, and if you sneezed near it, it'd up and
strike a hundred and twenty. I gave it to Rachel. She said it was 'some'
clock, said it was a dandy for striking and the time didn't matter as the
old kitchen clock saw to that. It's the same with Prue, the time doesn't
matter, and they look up to her in the kitchen mostly, I expect, because
she's an oddity, same as Selina Pinckney's clock. Seems to me anything
crazy and useless is reckoned valuable these days, and not only among
coloured folk but whites--Dinah, hasn't Mr. Richard come in yet?"

"No, Mistress Pinckney," replied the coloured girl, who had just entered
the room, "I haven't seen no sign of him."

"Running about without his luncheon," grumbled the lady, "said he had a
deal in cotton on. I might have guessed it." Then when Dinah had left the
room and talking half to herself, "There's nothing Richard seems to think
of but business or pleasure. I'm not saying anything against the boy, he's
as good and better than any of the rest, but like the rest of them his
character wants forming round something real. It wasn't so in the old
days, they were bad enough then and drank a lot more, but they had in them
something that made for something better than business or pleasure. Matt
Curry didn't go out and get killed for business or pleasure, and all the
old Pinckneys didn't fight in the war or fight with one another for
business or pleasure. There's more in life than fooling with girls or
buying cotton or sailing yacht races, but Richard doesn't seem to see it.
I did think that having a ward to look after would have sobered him a bit
and helped to form his character--well, maybe it will yet."

"I don't want to be looked after," said Phyl flushing up, "and if Mr.
Pinckney--" she stopped. What she was going to say about Pinckney was not
clear in her mind, clouded as it was with anger--anger at the thought that
she was an object to be looked after by her "guardian," anger at the
implication that he was not bothering to look after her, being too much
engaged in the business of fooling with girls and buying cotton, and a
reasonable anger springing from and embracing the whole world that held
his beyond Vernons.

"Yes?" said Miss Pinckney.

"Oh, nothing," replied the other, trying to laugh and making a failure of
the business