for the colored maid. Loudly he called:

"Annie----! Annie----!! Annie!!!" In a savage undertone, half directed
at Laura, he growled: "Where the devil is that lazy nigger?"

Laura looked up, a mild expression of indignant surprise on her face.
Quietly she said:

"I suppose she's gone to get her breakfast."

"Well, she ought to be here," he snapped.

"Did it ever occur to you," said Laura quickly, "that she has got to
eat, just the same as you have?"

"She's your servant, isn't she?" he barked.

"My maid," she corrected, with difficulty controlling herself.

"Well, what have you got her for--to eat, or to wait on you?" Again he
thundered: "Annie!"

"Don't be so cross," protested Laura. "What do you want?"

"I want the paper," he growled, pouring out one half-glass of water
from a bottle.

"I will get it for you," she said, with quiet dignity.

Wearily she got up and went to the table where there were other morning
papers. Taking the _Recorder_, she handed it to him, and, returning to
her seat, reopened the _Chronicle_. He relapsed into a sulky silence,
and for a few minutes there was peace. Suddenly Annie entered the room
from the sleeping apartments.

"Do yuh want me, suh?" she asked, with the ludicrous grin characteristic
of her race.

"Yes!" snapped the broker. "I did want you, but don't now. When I'm at
home I have a man to look after me, and I get what I want----"

Laura looked up angrily. Her patience was exhausted.

"For Heaven's sake, Will, have a little patience!" she said. "If you
like your man so well, you had better live at home, but don't come
around here with a grouch and bulldoze everybody----"

"Don't think for a moment that there's much to come around here for.
Annie, this room's stuffy."

"Yassuh."

"Draw those _portieres_. Let those curtains up. Let's have a little
light. Take away those clothes and hide them. Don't you know that a man
doesn't want to see the next morning anything to remind him of the
night before? Make the place look a little respectable."

Annie stood in considerable awe of Brockton. In fact, she was afraid of
him, so she did not stand on the order of going. She scurried around,
and after picking up the coat and vest, opera cloak and other things,
threw them over her arm without any idea of order.

"Be careful!" angrily shouted the irate broker, who was watching her.
"You're not taking the wash off the line."

"Yassuh!"

The negress literally flew out of