flush with the street. At the door of one, an old
black woman had stooped to lift a large basket,
piled high with laundered clothes. The girl, as
she passed, seized one end of the basket and helped
the old woman to raise it to her head, where it
rested solidly on the cushion of her head-kerchief.
During this interlude, Warwick, though he had
slackened his pace measurably, had so nearly
closed the gap between himself and them as to
hear the old woman say, with the dulcet negro
intonation:--

"T'anky', honey; de Lawd gwine bless you
sho'. You wuz alluz a good gal, and de Lawd
love eve'ybody w'at he'p de po' ole nigger. You
gwine ter hab good luck all yo' bawn days."

"I hope you're a true prophet, Aunt Zilphy,"
laughed the girl in response.

The sound of her voice gave Warwick a thrill.
It was soft and sweet and clear--quite in harmony
with her appearance. That it had a faint
suggestiveness of the old woman's accent he
hardly noticed, for the current Southern speech,
including his own, was rarely without a touch of it.
The corruption of the white people's speech was
one element--only one--of the negro's unconscious
revenge for his own debasement.