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NEVER thought," said Manning bitterly, "that I would have to take my sister from England to Carolina to avoid the familiarity of a nigger! But what is a man to do? Frenchmen are bad enough … niggers are worse; when you get the two combined in one big, hulking buck who ought to be building rice dikes, instead of sitting around in drawing-rooms, reeking with French perfumery … isn't that just about the limit of endurance, Dr. Leyden?"

Leyden laughed softly.

Manning resumed, his cold voice edged with anger. "Yet what else can I do? He's received over here, he's an Oxonian, he is rich and a friend and classmate of Giles, and he has saved his life and that of my sister; one can't snub him with decency." And Manning swore a fervid Carolinian oath. "To think that a sister of mine … a Moultrie, should find anything beyond a curious interest in a great big pampered lump of an African nigger … once worth a thousand dollars and to-day, thanks to the meddling Yankees, not worth a d!" Again Manning mounted heights of classic objurgatory.

Leyden had been an interested audience to this monologue. He liked Manning, or, more properly, he liked to be with Manning. Few people really liked Manning 122