Ma nodded. They weren't gentlemen-born, as he was, she sighed--"born
to Southern best." And then, with a "Poor wretch--poor, proud,
degraded wretch!" she handed out the thing she had been making--a
white rosette as beautiful as any rose--and told Mrs. Preston to put
it "there," touching the myrtle cross with fingers kissing-soft.

But Mrs. Preston only said back, "He's refused even the minister!" and
seemed more unhappy, oh, mighty unhappy.

Hope Carolina gasped with the wonderment of it all. How funny it
seemed, how dreadfully funny, that everybody had forgotten everything
just because a child had gone up into the sky: Uncle John the bullet,
and Mrs. Preston the lost paradise next door, and Ma the barbecue
speeches that made niggers vote any which way--all, all that Radicals
had ever done to them!

After a while one of the voices spoke again--whose, Hope Carolina
could never tell:

"_Think, there won't be a white face there!_" And then, after a pause,
another voice:

"_No, not one!_"

Hope Carolina jumped in bed, trembling.

Presently Mrs. Preston went, and then everybody else went to bed. But
still Hope Carolina trembled. For that was exactly what Miss Polly and
Miss Sally Graham had said--_about the white face_.