Miss Lou | Page 6

breathless girl, still in her simple morning costume. Before she could speak her uncle said, severely, "Since we have waited so long, we will still wait till you can dress."
The girl was glad to escape to her room in order that she might have time to frame some excuse before she faced the inquisition in store for her.
Constitutional traits often assert themselves in a manner contrary to the prevailing characteristics of a region. Instead of the easy- going habits of life common to so many of his neighbors, Mr. Baron was a martinet by nature, and the absence of large, engrossing duties permitted his mind to dwell on little things and to exaggerate them out of all proportion. Indeed, it was this utter lack of perspective in his views and judgments which created for Miss Lou half her trouble. The sin of tardiness which she had just committed was treated like a great moral transgression, or rather it was so frowned upon that it were hard to say he could show his displeasure at a more heinous offence. The one thought now in Mr. Baron's mind was that the sacred routine of the day had been broken. Often there are no greater devotees to routine than those who are virtually idlers. Endowed with the gift of persistence rather than with a resolute will, it had become second nature to maintain the daily order of action and thought which he believed to be his right to enforce upon his household. Every one chafed under his inexorable system except his wife. She had married when young, had grown up into it, and supplemented it with a system of her own which took the form of a scrupulous and periodical attention to all little details of housekeeping. There was a constant friction, therefore, between the careless, indolent natures of the slaves and the precise, exacting requirements of both master and mistress. Miss Lou, as she was generally called on the plantation, had grown up into this routine as a flower blooms in a stiff old garden, and no amount of repression, admonition and exhortation, not even in her younger days of punishment, could quench her spirit or benumb her mind. She submitted, she yielded, with varying degrees of grace or reluctance. As she increased in years, her thoughts, as we have seen, were verging more and more on the border of rebellion. But the habit of obedience and submission still had its influence. Moreover, there had been no strong motive and little opportunity for independent action. Hoping not even for tolerance, much less for sympathy, she kept her thoughts to herself, except as she occasionally relieved her mind to her old mammy, Aun' Jinkey.
She came into the dining-room hastily at last, but the expression of her face was impassive and inscrutable. She was received in solemn silence, broken at first only by the long formal grace which Mr. Baron never omitted and never varied. In her rebellious mood the girl thought, "What a queer God it would be if he were pleased with this old cut-and-dried form of words! All the time uncle's saying them he is thinking how he'll show me his displeasure."
Mr. Baron evidently concluded that his best method at first would be an expression of offended dignity, and the meal began in depressing silence, which Mrs. Baron was naturally the first to break. "It must be evident to you, Louise," she said in a thin, monotonous voice, "that the time has come for you to consider and revise your conduct. The fact that your uncle has been kept waiting for his supper is only one result of an unhappy change which I have observed, but have forborne to speak of in the hope that your own conscience and the influence of your past training would lead you to consider and conform. Think of the precious moments, indeed I may say hours, that you have wasted this afternoon in idle converse with an old negress who is no fit companion for you! You are becoming too old--"
"Too old, aunt? Do you at last recognize the fact that I am growing older?"
With a faint expression of surprise dawning in her impassive face Mrs. Baron continued: "Yes, old enough to remember yourself and not to be compelled to recognize the duties of approaching womanhood. I truly begin to feel that I must forbid these visits to an old, ignorant and foolish creature whose ideas are totally at variance with all that is proper and right."
"Uncle thinks I have approached womanhood sufficiently near to know something of my business affairs, and even went so far as to suggest his project of marrying me to my cousin in order to unite in sacred-- I mean legal bonds the two plantations."
The two old people looked at