As, with overstrained cordiality, he shook hands with his youthful admirer, Neil was fretful. So many others could have been listening. It could all pop out so easily. His “Okay—let it!” was not highly spirited. But he was proud that this ambitious boy turned to him as a friend with whom he could drop the parboiled cynicism with which his kind protected themselves against a dull and extremely advisory adult world.

“Neil! Maybe you’ll really get into the race-struggle and be able to give us some new slants. I wish you could do something with the racemen that are too touchy, and insist that the colored press spell That Word as n-blank-r, and have a cat-fit when they hear a bunch of innocent white kids doing some corny old song like ‘You could hear those darkies singing.’ I’ll bet some of ‘em insist that Niggardly ought to be pronounced Negrodly. Couldn’t you make fun of them? Gee, you know, you could maybe become one of the leaders of the race.”

Neil was gratified by such faith, after days when he had been creepily conscious of the Family muttering, secretly telephoning to one another late at night.

The Family stood there looking at him, no matter where he was.

The Charles Sayward who had always been the most cheerful and reasonable and decent of his in-laws was most firmly alienated. He had quietly abolished Neil along with any silly rumors that Kitty might have “Negro blood.” Charles had the simple-hearted immobility of the small man who knows his small job perfectly, and Kitty turned to him now for the sweetness she had once found in a brother named Neil, who had died here recently—very regrettable, but let’s not talk about it.

He found a measure of sympathy only in his mother and Vestal and Pat. And his mother, though she was tender, though she was not retaliatory, was now asserting that she had thought it all over and received a new revelation, to the effect that Uncle Benoit had been neither colored nor a gambler, but a respectable Caucasian in the bill-collecting line.

So they came to a Christmas that was a caricature of Christmases past, with more Topsies than Tiny Tims. No Saywards or Beehouses appeared at the holiday dinner, held at Robert’s this year, and the rest of the Family poured a horrid sweetness upon a self-sufficient young woman to whom they could not help referring as “poor Biddy.”

Snow was falling all day, and from time to time somebody would say brightly, “Fine! It’s a real white Christmas,” and every time he heard it, Neil thought, “So even Christmas gets jimcrowed.”

The Family did not, as of old, stay on for a rackety supper, but managed to get themselves gone by three. When he had escorted Vestal and Biddy home, Neil muttered, “I think I’ll get a little fresh air,” and hastened to Ash Davis’s for a taste of security.