ares you by its seeming futility to
come forth and do weaponless battle and then sends you back
discomfited and drenched. A woman was coming up the walk bent in a
huddle over a bundle which she carried in her arms. Mary Louise gazed
searchingly for a moment and then, as the figure would have passed the
door, on around to the rear of the house, stepped out on the porch and
called:

"Zenie! Zenie! Come in this way. There's nobody around there."

Zenie raised her head in mute surprise and then slowly obeyed. She
shuffled across the porch, and at the door, which Mary Louise held
open for her, paused and looked about her in indecision. She was a
buxom creature, of the type that the Negroes about the station would
call a "High Brown," but without the poise and aplomb that conscious
membership in that class usually brings.

"Mis' Susie in?" she ventured, after a careful survey of the room had
assured her that such was not probable. And her care, relaxed for the
moment, allowed the corner of the shawl to fall from the bundle in her
arms, which forthwith set up a remote wailing, feeble and muffled,
though determined.

Mary Louise raised a skeptic eyebrow at the discredited Zenie.

"Sshh!" dispassionately urged the latter, scorning for once public
regard and continuing to gaze about the low-ceilinged room for the
absent but much-desired Miss Susie.

Such callous indifference baffled Mary Louise, even while it answered
her innermost questionings, and for the moment she was voiceless.
"What in the world----!" she said at length and hated herself for the
vulgar surprise in her tone.

Zenie turned away from the inspection and, finding herself and
appendage the centre of interest, bridled with a timid pleasure, and
then poked a ruminative finger into the swaddle of shawl and
comforter.

"Yas'm," she began in explanation. "Done brung 'im to show t' Mis'
Susie. Didn' know you wuz home." Her manner had all the affable ease
of a conscious equal.

Mary Louise rubbed her eyes. Time was bringing changes; Zenie had once
been humble. Her voice rang with an accusing hardness. "I thought
you'd shut the door on that worthless Zeke of yours."

Zenie did not raise her head but continued the aimless poking in the
bundle, which strangely responded to the treatment and was quiet
again. "No'm. He comes roun'. Eve' now an' then. Zeke's got a cah!" A
momentary gleam from dark eyes lit like coals into a sudden flare, and
Mary Louise was cons