She had not forgotten the noon meal, and she had heard the bell heralding it; but being a sensitive child, she had been aware of all the comings and goings, the raised voices and solemn faces in the big house, as well as the nervous excitement that had spread all day among the Negroes. So she had taken her book and two apples and gone off to the barn to read and think and be alone. The place she chose was near a window.

Although the shutter was closed, it admitted a generous crack of light, enough to read by on the bright winter day, and she had chanced to see both Leon and Ezra ride off the place without knowing the destination of either.

Late in the afternoon Benjamin Davis came over, and between them, he and Deborah settled that in a few days he would escort both Bonard and Leon to Savannah and make arrangements for Leon’s lodging and education. Deborah was satisfied to leave details entirely to her friend and neighbor. For his help she promised him that his next year’s cotton crop to be processed at her gin would cost him nothing. He said, “Tut,” but did not refuse the offer. (As it turned out, Deborah took a share of Benjamin’s cotton for the ginning of it, but less than she would have if she had not felt herself to be in some degree indebted to him.)

She was drafting a letter to her old friend in Savannah, Miss Pennington, to tell her that her son would presently take up residence there and ask if he might be permitted to call upon her and her nieces for the benefit of refined company of true ladies, when there was a knock at the door of the small sitting room that now served as her office, and where she now kept a work desk.

She said, “Come in,” and in walked Roscoe Elk. He was dressed formally for plantation business, she thought automatically: shirt collar buttoned although he wore no stock, suit jacket on and buttoned, hat carried in the crook of one arm. Deborah did not at first acknowledge the importance his dress gave the occasion, but said merely, “What is it, Roscoe?”

He bowed his head, then lifted it. His voice was more than serious when he spoke; it was solemn and sonorous. “Madam,” he said, “you are aware of the perturbation that has afflicted the people on this day when it became known that the girl Clovis was with child?”

Astonished at these words as well as his manner of speaking them, Deborah at first merely stared at him. Then she nodded once, abruptly.

Roscoe took a breath. “I,” he then said, “and none other, shall marry her. I shall be the father of her child.”

The pause between them lengthened, grew in solemnity. Finally Deborah said, “Is she ready to marry you?”