The emotions have their own logic, swift and incomprehensible, and it was by that logic that Neil thought of Winthrop Brewster, son of the Reverend Evan. Winthrop was lucky; he would not be sent in a plush-lined coffin through Princeton and the officers’ club; he could honorably be independent and poor.

And by that same logic, dismissing his promise to himself that he would play safe, next afternoon Neil drove down to the little house of Dr. Brewster, off Mayo Street.

He had not thought out the whole reason for his going; he had nothing pertinent to say when he walked in on a surprised Evan, his wife Corinne, who was less dark and a good deal less cordial, and the children, Winthrop and Thankful, those true Yankees whose family had been in Massachusetts ever since a very black Pilgrim ancestor had fled there, if not by the Mayflower, at least by the underground, which is the same thing.

He had not lied to Vestal, this time; he had telephoned Shirley to explain that he might not be able to get home for dinner.

Business.

Chapter 29

It was not that Winthrop and Thankful were much less black than their father, or had straighter hair or beakier noses, but they had even more assurance as American citizens. The easy confidence with which they looked at Neil, the straightness with which they carried their shoulders, made them seem not like products of the slave-block and the cotton-field, but like what they were—American school children, unusual only in unusual gentleness.

You cannot hear constantly at school that Americans are the bravest, richest and mose generous people in history without absorbing a certain pride, which is not too objectionable if it be tempered by a more serene and informed culture at home.

Neil lumbered in, explaining that he had never forgotten Dr. Brewster’s sermon. “Just thought—coming past this way—might drop in and say hello.” Winthrop took to him as to a robust older brother, and Thankful rather considered him the type of man she had been thinking of marrying but hadn’t noticed around here anywhere.

Out of pulpit clothes, in a brown jacket, a soft white shirt and an insignificant blue bow-tie, Dr. Brewster was as much the post-office worker as he was the clergyman, and if his grammar persisted in being more accurate than Neil’s (or Rod Aldwick’s) and his vocabulary more flexible, he was much jollier. His laughter came from a huge chest, a large mouth, a tolerant heart. His wife was more watchful of the intruding white man, more suspicious, less willing to risk the security of the family. She was a more delicate image than Dr. Brewster, with a thin nose carved in brown agate.