Neil and Vestal heard the street door close, that Sunday afternoon, and then, in the dining-room, the sound of Biddy, crying desperately. When they galloped in, she raised her head to stare at them mutinously, her wet eyes red and desolate. She choked, “Mummy, Mrs. Staubermeyer says I’m a nigger.”

“Oh–-”

“Am I a nigger?”

“Only as much as your father and mother are, and you can see for yourself how much that is,” Vestal swore, “and we think we’re pretty nice, don’t you?”

“Am I a nigger like Little Black Sambo? Or that nasty boy on the shoeblacking can?”

“Not a bit like Little Black Sambo. More like Uncle Ash. Or Nora.”

“Oh, I love them!”

“Biddy! Quick! What happened?”

“I was playing with Teddy and Tessie Staubermeyer and Teddy said I was a nigger, and I said no I wasn’t, and he said his papa and mama were all the time laughing at my daddy because he is a nigger and so I’m a nigger, too, Teddy said, and he said I couldn’t play with them any more unless I all undressed, and I didn’t want to–-”

“What’s all this?” Neil’s anger was that of a cold man.

“He said and Tessie said, if I was a nigger, I was a slave, and slaves aren’t good for nothing except to take off their clothes and parade around in front of their masters, bare-naked. And then Mrs. Staubermeyer, she was listening to us from the porch–-”

“She was?”

“–-and she said no, they didn’t ought to make me undress, it was too cold, but it was a good joke on me, though, my daddy was so high and mighty and he wasn’t nothing but a nigger, she said, and I better get out of there and go home. And I went.”

They coaxed Biddy into laughing before she was put to bed, and she announced that while she was a Negro like Nora Davis, she was also an Indian princess named Rosemary Kitten Sunshine. She was already devoted to both of those romantic strains, with a sentimentality her father could never achieve.

Outside her room, Neil growled, “I’m sorry she had to get the news that way, from a family of degenerates. Come. We’re going to have a talk with the Staubermeyers.”

On his way down the hall, he glanced into his “den” and noticed his favorite Winchester on the wall. He made no particular connection, but he did remember that he was an excellent rifle-shot and that this form of sport is not hindered by a lame leg.

* * * * *

Cedric Staubermeyer, dealer in paints and carpets, was not meaty and resolute like his neighbor, Mr. W. S. Vander. He was puffy and pouting and unpunctual, but in his hysteria he was dangerous. When he found Neil and Vestal at his front door—it was of golden oak, with net curtain inside a diamond-shaped plate-glass insert—he looked embarrassed and sulkily muttered, “Come in.”