"There's no doubt of it, I think."

"And it's all your blamed fault," burst out the other angrily;
"you've gone and turned them all agin me--white and black alike.
Why, it's as much as I can do to get a stroke of honest labour in
this nigger-ridden country."

Christopher laughed shortly.

"There is no use blaming the Negroes," he said, and his
pronunciation of the single word would have stamped him in
Virginia as of a different class from Fletcher; "they're usually
ready enough to work if you treat them decently."

"Treat them!" began Fletcher, and Carraway was about to fling
open the shutters, when light steps passed quickly along the hall
and he heard the rustle of a woman's silk dress against the
wainscoting.

"There's a stranger to see you, grandfather," called a girl's
even voice from the house; "finish paying off the hands and come
in at once."

"Well, of all the impudence!" exclaimed the young man, with a
saving dash of humour. Then, without so much as a parting word,
he ran quickly down the steps and started rapidly in the
direction of the darkening road, while the silk dress rustled
upon the porch and at the garden gate as the latch was lifted.