“Neil, I’ve been thinking it over, and I was wrong and you were quite right, my boy, in insisting upon our having the courtesy to refer to this nation’s darker wards as Negroes, not niggers. We appreciate the finer qualities of the better class of Negroes, and have since long before you were born! Didn’t T.R., when he was President, have Booker T. Washington to lunch? (That’s more than F.D.R. would’ve done, let me tell you!) But hot-heads like you, by demanding more for these unfortunates than they’re able to digest, more than the decent ones would even think of asking for, are merely interfering with the orderly processes of evolution, and–-And so shut up about the whole thing, Neil, and try to have the sense of a moron at least! And while, as an illegal act, none of us would take any personal part in it, I think some day those documents about Xavier Pic may be found missing from the files of the Historical Society, and then none of us need worry!”

Oliver’s cheery smile urged, “Have courage, my young friend,” and Neil expected to hear an archangelic judge say, “Motion granted.” But the court-room silence was ruined by Harold Whittick, brother of Robert’s wife. He was screaming, “The hell with Neil and his ‘truth’! It’s outrageous that my own sister should be dragged into this and wake up and find she’s married to a nigger like Bob. And what the scandal may do to my advertising business, I hesitate to even contemplate!”

Alice yelled in agreement, “Outrage is right!” She turned upon Robert a glare of extreme dislike, and hissed, “I see now why you always make such noises in the bathroom!”

Robert, a dull man but fond of home and slippers, mourned, “Great God, it’s not my fault if I have some queer blood. Besides—you heard me—I deny the story, lock, stock and barrel, and I think Neil has gone plumb crazy!”

“Something worse than crazy,” said Morton Beehouse.

Aunt Laura Saxinar looked sniffy at all this vulgarity, and stated, “This is a vile mess, with which I simply do not care to be associated. My husband will tell you whether or no he considers himself a black man. But as for my daughter, Patricia, I have not merely a mother’s heart to feel but a mother’s eye to see that she is most certainly no—no Negro, or whatever you prefer to call those freaks—and I am told that none of them can ever learn to speak a foreign language, whereas Patricia speaks French like a native!”