Neil drew the breath of one about to repel boarders, but Vestal’s voice, clear, low, only to be caught by a husband, insisted, “No. I want you to see what your intellectual friends are like!” Then, cheerily, “Do sit down, everybody. Belfreda—if I’m not being too intimate—how is everything going?”

She was so placid, so merry, that already she had taken the fuse out of their joke. Borus, an expert in social relations, stood easily, a little taller than Vestal, and he condescended, “You know, you’re a good guy, lady.”

He stared at her with such amusement, as though he knew all her thoughts and snobbishnesses and generosities, knew her in ball-gown or bathing suit, that she flushed and lost the lead. She said hastily, “Neil, I’ll get some drinks for your friends. Will you make them at home?”

He thought how taut, quick, knife-sliding, Borus looked, and he said carefully, with the expectation of trouble, “What do you mean by butting in here?”

“Maybe just to needle you, and maybe to see whether you’re an honest-to-God raceman or another gravy-sermon, race-relations highbrow. We was wondering if you can take it with us coalheavers, Neil?”

He felt that properly he ought to be offended, and found that he was not at all offended; that a lot of fine, high social fences which he had supposed to exist between Captain Kingsblood (of the Kingsbloods) and Borus the black bartender had been shadows, and that he might be lucky to have the friendship of a Borus, when all the Featherings set upon him.

“I hope so, Borus,” he said, very gravely. “But I’m green. I’ll have to count on you, if I can.”

“You bet!” said Hack Riley, and Borus drawled, “Maybe you can,” as one who meant it, or would mean it some day, or would very nearly mean it.

Vestal came in with a huge maple tray with drinks and ice and soda. Hack clumsily rose, reaching out his hands to take it, but the deft Borus was ahead of him, and he began to mix, while Hack and Faydis looked shyly about the serenity and assurance of the room. They all had highballs, and everything was changed, and these were no longer black invaders resented by lofty whites, but just six young people, fond of ribaldry and laughter, having a surprisingly good time together. They laughed at Borus’s stories of greedy white policemen, at Hack’s opinion of white sergeants, at Vestal’s first surprise at their entrance.

Belfreda wanted to know, “How’s Biddy?”

“Getting so big now!” said Mother Vestal.

“You ought to give her more broccoli.”

“That’s so.”

“And how is Nigger—Prince, I mean!” said Belfreda.

There was a trace, inevitably, of race-talk.

Borus agreed completely with Mr. Feathering about Negro culture. “What does a smoke want of drayma when he can get a bankroll and a nice piece—pink or tan?” he scoffed.