the bag, Delia said: "I wouldn' send. Just git yo' Daddy to buy you some."
Hildegarde flushed. "Oh, I couldn't ask him for money."
"Effen yo' don't ask, you nevah gits," the maid warned her. "Plums don't drop 'thout you shakes the tree."
Leaving Hildegarde, presently, to bathe and rest, Delia went downstairs to the front porch where Carew and young Meriweather were smoking in the soft autumn sunlight.
"Mistah Louis," Delia remarked, "that po' chile needs some clothes, but she say she won't ask you."
"Why not?"
"I reckon she doan feel that you's her real Daddy. An' I tole her she ain't gwine git no plums effen she don't shake the tree—"
The men shouted at that.
"So I'm the plum-tree, Delia?"
The eyes of the negress were inscrutable. "I ain't sayin' it, is I?"
"I'm not made of money, Delia."
"No, suh. But you knows the kin' of clo'es Miss Sally wears."
With sudden decision Carew's hands came down on the arm of his chair. "I'll run up to Baltimore with her tomorrow and have Anne take her to the shops. I'm not going to have my daughter put in the shade by Sally Hulburt."
When Delia had gone, Carew said to Meriweather, "I might as well be killed for a sheep as a lamb."
