It was one of Vestal’s nights for being advanced and humanitarian.

“I don’t see that, Neil. I don’t see that Belfreda is any more demanding than these white bobby-soxers that are only fifteen years old and have to have the family car every evening. I wouldn’t like it if I had to spend all day in somebody else’s kitchen, in the grease and cabbage-smell. Would you like it, you bloated financier?”

“No, I don’t guess I would. But still: private bath, and no six in a room, like I hear there are in the nigger quarter, on Mayo Street; chance to sleep quiet and alone. At least, I hope Belfreda sleeps alone, but I always wonder about those back stairs. And a rest every afternoon from two to four-thirty, just when we’re going crazy in the bank over the books. Free board and room and eighteen dollars a week to put away.”

“Well, you make eighty!”

“But I’ve got to support you—and Belfreda!”

“But she tells me she has to help her granddad—you know, that old colored bootblack at the Pineland, old Wash.”

“Oh, I know.” Neil was reasonably tender-hearted. “She probably doesn’t have much fun, always taking care of some other girl’s baby. Charley Sayward claims the time will come when nobody will do domestic work for strangers except as a specialist, at fifty dollars a week, and go home every night like a banker—or a plumber. But I wouldn’t like it! I liked it when the hired girl worked all week for eight dollars and did the washing and baked cookies for the little massa—that was me. Won’t it be a hell of a joke on the returned heroes if all the subject peoples that we fought to free, get free, and grab our jobs? Oh, Vestal, this world is getting too much for a poor rifleman!”

She had been inspecting a cupboard. She wailed, “That dratted girl has gone and made two pies again, to save herself trouble, and the second one will get soggy before we eat it! I swear, I’m going to fire her and do my own work.”

“Aren’t you busting down in your defense of the downtrodden?”

“Grrrr! Let’s take a look at her room, while she’s out.”

Feeling like spies, they tiptoed upstairs and into Belfreda’s boudoir. Her bed was not made—it never was made—and over it were scattered shoes and pink-ribboned underwear and movie magazines, and the pillow was black with hair-grease. Upon her Bible, on the night-table, was a pamphlet labeled, “High John the Conqueror Magic Catalogue: Lodestones, Hoodoo Bags, Jickey Perfume, Mo-Jo Salts, Adam and Eve Roots, Ancient Seal of Shemhamforas.” An odor of incense and perfume was solid in the room.

“And it was such a sweet room when we gave it to her,” mourned Vestal.

“Let’s get out of this. I feel as if we were in a conjuh den and somebody’s likely to sneak out from under the bed and start cutting.”

As they came to the head of the back stairs, Belfreda was skipping up. She stopped to stare at them, malevolently.