Keeping her head averted, the slave woman murmured her assent and started to move away.

“Wait!” cried Honoré. “Calvin’s got some just as bad off as mine.”

“She can come up and get them later,” said Calvin.

“Take them off now,” said Honoré. “She will not look at your hairy white legs.”

Calvin turned his back, stripped off his pants, and handed them to her. She scurried away.

“You are so silly to be shy,” said Honoré. “It does not matter what servants see. It is like being naked in front of trees or cats.”

“I just don’t like going up to our room without trousers.”

“In trousers wet with urine, you will be disgusting. But if we are both naked, everyone will pretend not to have seen us. We are invisible.”

“Does that mean you plan to use the front stairs?”

“Of course not,” said Honoré. “And I must lead the way, for if I have to climb three flights of stairs looking at your buttocks I will lose the ability to write of beauty for at least a month.”

“Why do you think the cook glared at us?” asked Calvin.

“I have no idea, my friend,” said Honoré. “But does she need a reason? Of course all the Black people in this place hate all the White people.”

“But usually they don’t show it,” said Calvin.

“Usually the White men wear trousers,” said Honoré. “I am quite certain that the slaves all knew we were asleep under the hedge long before we woke up. But they did not cover us or waken us—that is how they show their hatred. By not doing things that no one commanded them to do.”

Calvin chuckled.

“Tell me what’s funny?” Honoré demanded.

“I was just thinking—maybe it wasn’t you what peed on your trousers.”

Honoré pondered this for a few moments. “For that matter, my friend, maybe it wasn’t you who peed on yours.”

Calvin groaned. “You are an evil man, Honoré, with an evil imagination.”

“It is my knack.”

Not till they got to their room and were changing clothes had Calvin’s head cleared enough for him to realize the significance of what the ladies were talking about by the hedge. “A schoolteacher abolitionist named Peggy? That’s got to be Miz Larner, the schoolteacher Alvin married.”

“Oh, my poor Calvin. You went three days without mentioning your brother, and now you have relapsed.”

“I been thinking about him ever since we got that letter from Mother telling about the wedding and how the curse was lifted and all. I wonder if he plans on having seven sons.” Calvin cackled with laughter.

“If he has such a plan we must find him and stop him,” said Honoré. “Two Makers is more than the world needs already. We have no need for three.”

“What I’m thinking is we ought to look up this bluestocking abolitionist Peggy and make her acquaintance.”

“Calvin, what kind of trouble are you planning to make?”

“No trouble at all,” said Calvin, annoyed. “Why do you think I want to cause trouble?”