"We wish you to have ideas, and have tried to inculcate right
ideas."

"Which means only your ideas, uncle."

"Louise, are you losing your mind?"

"No, uncle, I am beginning to find it, and that I have a right to
use it. I am willing to pay all due respect and deference to you and
to aunt, but I protest against being treated as a child on one hand
and as a wax figure which can be stood up and married to anybody on
the other. I have patiently borne this treatment as long as I can,
and I now reckon the time has come to end it."

Mr. Baron was thunderstruck and his wife was feeling for her
smelling-bottle. Catching a glimpse of Zany, where she stood open-
mouthed in her astonishment, her master said, sternly, "Leave the
room!" Then he added to his niece, "Think of your uttering such wild
talk before one of our people! Don't you know that my will must be
law on this plantation?"

"I'm not one of your people," responded the girl, haughtily. "I'm
your niece, and a Southern girl who will call no man master."

At this moment there was a knock at the door. Without waiting for it
to be opened, a tall, lank man entered and said, hastily, "Mr.
Baron, I reckon there's news which yer orter hear toreckly." He was
the overseer of the plantation.