Arrived at Emma Campbell’s quarters, he found her sitting stiffly erect, her foot upon her new suit-case, her new cloak over her arm, and the bird-cage under her hand.  The expressman who had called for her trunk early that morning had good-naturedly offered to carry the bird-cage along with it, but Emma had flatly refused to let the cat get out of her sight.  Even when she climbed into the car she held fast to the cage.

“I don’t say nothin’ ’bout me.  All I scared ob is, dat dis unforchnate cat’s gwine to lose ‘is min’ before we-all finishes up.”

It was with difficulty that Peter persuaded her to leave the cage in the car when they reached his uncle’s hotel.

“Mistuh,” said Emma to the chauffeur, “is you-all got any fambly dependin’ on you?”

“One wife.  Three kids,” said the chauffeur, briefly.

“I ain’t de kin’ ob lady whut makes threats agin’ a gent’man,” said Emma, looking him unblinklngly in the eye.  “All I says is, dat I started whah I come fum wid dat cat an’ I ‘specks to lan’ up whah I ‘s gwine to wid dat same cat in dat same cage.  Bein’ as you ’s got dem chillun en dat wife, I calls yo’ ‘tenshun to dat fac’, suh.”

The chauffeur, a case-hardened pirate, laughed.  “All right, lady,” said he, genially.  “It ain’t in my line to granny cats, but that one will be the apple of me good eye until you git back.  I wouldn’t like the missus to be a widder:  she’s too darn good-lookin’.”

With her mind at ease on this point, Emma consented to leave Satan in the car and follow Peter.  Emma looked resplendently respectable, and she knew it.  She was dressed as well as if she had expected to be buried.  By innate wisdom she had retained the snowy head-handkerchief under her sailor hat, and she wore her big gold hoop-earrings.  Smart colored servants were common enough at that hotel, but one did not often see such as this tall and erect old woman in her severe black-and-white.  Emma belonged almost to another day and generation, although her face, like the faces of many old colored women, was unwrinkled.  She had a dignity that the newer generation lacks, and a pride unknown to them.

Peter and Emma went up in an elevator and were ushered into a private sitting-room, where were awaiting them Mr. Chadwick Champneys, a gentleman who was obviously a clergyman, another who was as obviously a member of the Bar, and the latter’s wife, a very handsome lady handsomely and expensively panoplied.  There was the usual hand-shaking, as Peter was introduced, and the handsome lady stared openly at Emma; one doesn’t often see a bridegroom come in accompanied by an old colored woman.  Emma courtesied, with the inimitable South Carolina bending of the knees, and then took a modest seat in the background and faded into it.  She had good manners, had Emma.

Mr. Champneys glanced at his watch, and presently left the room.  The clergyman, book in hand, stepped into the middle of the floor, and looked importantly religious.  The lawyer smilingly invited Peter to take his place beside him.  Everybody assumed a solemn look.