wanted to come he
'd bring me thoo fur a visit, so, you see, hyeah I am. I allus was
mighty anxious to see this hyeah town. But tell me, how 's Kit an' yo'
ma?"

"They 're both right well." He had forgotten them and their scorn of
Minty.

"Whaih do you live? I 'm comin' roun' to see 'em."

He hesitated for a moment. He knew how his mother, if not Kit, would
receive her, and yet he dared not anger this woman, who had his fate in
the hollow of her hand.

She saw his hesitation and spoke up. "Oh, that 's all right. Let
by-gones be by-gones. You know I ain't the kin' o' person that holds a
grudge ag'in anybody."

"That 's right, Minty, that 's right," he said, and gave her his
mother's address. Then he hastened home to prepare the way for Minty's
coming. Joe had no doubt but that his mother would see the matter quite
as he saw it, and be willing to temporise with Minty; but he had
reckoned without his host. Mrs. Hamilton might make certain concessions
to strangers on the score of expediency, but she absolutely refused to
yield one iota of her dignity to one whom she had known so long as an
inferior.

"But don't you see what she can do for us, ma? She knows people that I
know, and she can ruin me with them."

"I ain't never bowed my haid to Minty Brown an' I ain't a-goin' to do
it now," was his mother's only reply.

"Oh, ma," Kitty put in, "you don't want to get talked about up here, do
you?"

"We 'd jes' as well be talked about fu' somep'n we did n't do as fu'
somep'n we did do, an' it would n' be long befo' we 'd come to dat if we
made frien's wid dat Brown gal. I ain't a-goin' to do it. I 'm ashamed
o' you, Kitty, fu' wantin' me to."

The girl began to cry, while her brother walked the floor angrily.

"You 'll see what 'll happen," he cried; "you 'll see."

Fannie looked at her son, and she seemed to see him more clearly than
she had ever seen him before,--his foppery, his meanness, his cowardice.

"Well," she answered with a sigh, "it can't be no wuss den what 's
already happened."

"You 'll see, you 'll see," the boy reiterated.

Minty Brown allowed no wind of thought to cool the fire of her
determination. She left Hattie Sterling's soon after Joe, and he was
still walking the floor and uttering dire forebodings when she rang the
bell below and asked for the Hamiltons.

Mrs. Jones ushered her into her fearfully upholstered parlour, and then
puffed up stairs to tell her lodgers that there was a fri