John said proudly, “No, we can’t. None of us make very much ourselves, you know. So Evan—Dr. Brewster—has to work nights in the post office, to make both ends meet, as his children are still young. But he just laughs about it. He says we’re lucky to have a preacher that’s a civil-service employee and not a panhandler. And,” boastfully, “he’s a supervisor, and he has quite a few white men working under him!”

“Yet for a man like that,” offered Neil, “college degrees and all, to have to waste his time sorting circulars–-”

“We don’t think so,” Mr. Woolcape insisted. “We’re glad Reverend Brewster is willing to work with common people like ourselves, and not soak away in dreams in a pastor’s study. Especially my son Ryan feels that—he’s home on leave from the Army but he didn’t come with us today. He’s a little leftwing, I’m afraid.”

“My, my, my, Captain Kingsblood must be simply fascinated by our family history. Do tell him about the pup we had once that had six toes on each foot!” Mary Woolcape scoffed, and stretched out her hand to Neil in farewell.

He wilfully did not see it.

They were standing in front of the Woolcape house, which was not much larger than Evan Brewster’s, one-storied, white, immaculate; they were standing there, and Neil just stood there, till John Woolcape could scarce escape saying, “Won’t you come in?” And Neil did come in; he stepped right in after them, like it or not, and he was determined that nothing so petty as good manners should keep him from a chance of enlightenment.

He saw the shared glance of Emerson and his father which meant, “What does this loan-shark from the bank want? What sort of a crooked white-man’s trick is he up to?”

He tried to set up an old-schoolmates-together atmosphere with, “Do you remember that funny old hen we had in algebra, Captain?” Emerson chuckled. “She was a crank, all right.”

“But she had a good heart. One time after class she said to me, ‘Neil, if you would do your algebra better, you might become Governor of the State.’”

“Did she, Captain?” Emerson spoke with a drawl that was on the insulting side. “What she said to me, one time after class, was that she was considering only my welfare, and for a boy of my race to learn algebra instead of short-order cooking was ‘my, such a waste of time!’”

All the classmate cordiality was frozen. The Woolcapes were looking at Neil bleakly, they were waiting for his real mission…. Did bank clerks sell burial insurance?

“Please, I don’t intend to intrude. I know that you want to get your Sunday dinner, and I’m going to skip right along, but there’s a few things I earnestly want to know about—I mean, I don’t know much of anything about—uh—about this part of town, and I simply must have a better understanding of—of this part of town.”

What Neil was trying to say, without offense, was “better understanding of Negroes.” But did one say to them “Negroes” or “colored people” or “Ethiopians” or that cumbersome “Afro-Americans” or what? What would offend them least? Once, in Italy, he had heard a Negro soldier bawl at another, “Hustle up, nigger,” and yet he knew now that they were not fond of the word. It was confusing.