When he met Minty in the evening, however, the first glance at her reassured him.  Her face was wreathed in smiles as she came forward and held out her hand.

“Well, well, Joe Hamilton,” she exclaimed, “if I ain’t right-down glad to see you!  How are you?”

“I ‘m middlin’, Minty.  How ’s yourself?” He was so happy that he could n’t let go her hand.

“An’ jes’ look at the boy!  Ef he ain’t got the impidence to be waihin’ a mustache too.  You must ‘a’ been lettin’ the cats lick yo’ upper lip.  Did n’t expect to see me in New York, did you?”

“No, indeed.  What you doin’ here?”

“Oh, I got a gent’man friend what ‘s a porter, an’ his run ’s been changed so that he comes hyeah, an’ he told me, if I wanted to come he ’d bring me thoo fur a visit, so, you see, hyeah I am.  I allus was mighty anxious to see this hyeah town.  But tell me, how ‘s Kit an’ yo’ ma?”

“They ’re both right well.”  He had forgotten them and their scorn of Minty.

“Whaih do you live?  I ‘m comin’ roun’ to see ’em.”

He hesitated for a moment.  He knew how his mother, if not Kit, would receive her, and yet he dared not anger this woman, who had his fate in the hollow of her hand.

She saw his hesitation and spoke up.  “Oh, that ’s all right.  Let by-gones be by-gones.  You know I ain’t the kin’ o’ person that holds a grudge ag’in anybody.”

“That ’s right, Minty, that ’s right,” he said, and gave her his mother’s address.  Then he hastened home to prepare the way for Minty’s coming.  Joe had no doubt but that his mother would see the matter quite as he saw it, and be willing to temporise with Minty; but he had reckoned without his host.  Mrs. Hamilton might make certain concessions to strangers on the score of expediency, but she absolutely refused to yield one iota of her dignity to one whom she had known so long as an inferior.

“But don’t you see what she can do for us, ma?  She knows people that I know, and she can ruin me with them.”

“I ain’t never bowed my haid to Minty Brown an’ I ain’t a-goin’ to do it now,” was his mother’s only reply.

“Oh, ma,” Kitty put in, “you don’t want to get talked about up here, do you?”

“We ‘d jes’ as well be talked about fu’ somep’n we did n’t do as fu’ somep’n we did do, an’ it would n’ be long befo’ we ’d come to dat if we made frien’s wid dat Brown gal.  I ain’t a-goin’ to do it.  I ’m ashamed o’ you, Kitty, fu’ wantin’ me to.”

The girl began to cry, while her brother walked the floor angrily.

“You ’ll see what ’ll happen,” he cried; “you ’ll see.”

Fannie looked at her son, and she seemed to see him more clearly than she had ever seen him before,—­his foppery, his meanness, his cowardice.

“Well,” she answered with a sigh, “it can’t be no wuss den what ’s already happened.”

“You ’ll see, you ’ll see,” the boy reiterated.