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 The old crone puffed up again at this unexpected flare, and went out of the room, plopping her feet on floor and mumbling. Among these ungracious sounds the Captain caught, “Blin' ole fool!” But there was no need becoming offended and demanding what she meant. Her explanation would have been vague and unsatisfactory.

The verjuice which old Rose had sprinkled over Peter and Cissie by calling them “he-nigger” and “she-nigger” somehow minimized them, animalized them in the old lawyer's imagination. Rose's speech was charged with such contempt for her own color that it placed the mulatto and the octoroon down with apes and rabbits.

The lawyer fought against his feeling, for the sake of his secretary, who had come to occupy so wide a sector of his comfort and affection. Yet the old virago evidently spoke from a broad background of experience. She was at least half convincing. While the Captain repelled her charge against his quiet, hard-working brown helper, he admitted it against Cissie Dildine, whom he did not know. She was an animal, a female centaur, a wanton and a strumpet, as all negresses are wantons and strumpets. All white men in the South firmly believe that. They believe it with a peculiar detestation; and since they used these persons very profitably for a hundred and fifty years as breeding animals, one might say they believe it a trifle ungratefully.