They knocked again. She opened the door. There was Whitley Physicker, looking all cheerful and dignified, and behind him Pauley Wiseman, looking all important and dignified. Like two masts on the same ship, with sails all puffed out and bossy-looking. All full of wind. Coming to tell me what's right and proper, are you? We'll see.

“Goody Guester,” said Dr. Physicker. He doffed his hat proper, like a gentleman. That's what's wrong with Hatrack River these days, thought Old Peg. Too many folks putting on like gentlemen and ladies. Don't they know this is Hio? All the high-toned folks are down in the Crown Colonies with His Majesty, the other Arthur Stuart. The long-haired White king, as opposed to her own short-haired Black boy Arthur. Anybody in the state of Hio who thinks he's a gentleman is just fooling himself and nobody but the other fools.

“I suppose you want to come in,” said Old Peg.

“I hoped you'd invite us,” said Physicker. “We come from the school board.”

“You can turn me down on ther porch as easy as you can inside my house.”

“Now see here,” said Sheriff Pauley. He wasn't used to folks leaving him standing on porches.

“We didn't come to turn you down, Goody Guester,” said the doctor.

Old Peg didn't believe it for a minute. “You telling me that stiffnecked bunch of high-collar hypocrites is going to let a Black child into the new school?”

That set Sheriff Pauley off like gunpowder in a bucket. “Well, if you're so all-fired sure you know the answer, Old Peg, why'd you bother asking the question?”

“Cause I wanted you all down on record as being Black-hating slavers in your hearts! Then someday when the Emancipationists have their way and Black people have all their rights everywhere, you'll have to wear your shame in public like you deserve.”

Old Peg didn't even hear her husband coming up behind her, she was talking so loud.

"Margaret," said Horace Guester. "No man stands on my porch without a welcome. "

“You welcome them yourself, then,” said Old Peg. She turned her back on Dr. Physicker and Sheriff Pauley and walked on into the kitchen. “I wash my hands of it,” she shouted over her shoulder.

But once she was in the kitchen she realized that she wasn't cooking yet this morning, she was doing the upstairs beds. And as she stood there, kind of confused for a second, she got to thinking it was Pontius Pilate who did that first famous hand-washing. Why, she'd confessed herself unrighteous with her own words. God wouldn't look kindly on her if she once started in imitating someone as killed the Lord Jesus, like Pilate did. So she turned around and walked back into the commonroom and sat down near the hearth. It being August there wasn't no fire in it, which made it a cool place to sit. Not like the kitchen hearth, which was hot as the devil's privy on summer days lie this. No reason she should sweat her heart out in the kitchen while these two decided the fate of Arthur Stuart in the coolest spot in the house.

Her husband and the two visitors looked at her but didn't say a thing about her storming out and then storming back in. Old Peg knew what was said behind her back– that you might as well try to set a trap for a cyclone as to tangle with Old Peg Guester– but she didn't mind a bit if men like Whitley Physicker and Pauley Wiseman walked a little wary around her. After a second or two, waiting for her to settle down, they went right on with their talk.

“As I was saying, Horace, we looked at your proposal seriously,” Physicker said. “It would be a great convenience to us if the new teacher could be housed in your roadhouse instead of being boarded here and there the way it usually happens. But we wouldn't consider having you do it for free. We have enough students enrolled and enough basis in the property tax to pay you a small stipend for the service.”

“How much does a sty pen come to in money?” asked Horace.

“The details remain to be worked out, but the sum of twenty dollars for the year was mentioned.”

“Well,” said Horace, “that's a mite low, if you're thinking you're paying the actual cost.”

“On the contrary, Horace, we know that we're underpaying you by considerable. But since you offered to do it free, we hoped this would be an improvement on the original offer.”

Horace was all set to agree, but Peg wouldn't stand for all this pretending. “I know what it is, Dr. Physicker, and it's no improvement. We didn't offer to put up the schoolteacher for free. We offered to put up Arthur Stuart's teacher for free. And if you figure twenty dollars is going to make me change my mind about that, you better go back and do your figuring again'.”

Dr. Physicker got a pained look on his face. “Now, Goody Guester. Don't get ahead of yourself on this. There was not a man on the school board who had any personal objection to having Arthur Stuart attend the new school.”

When Physicker said tkat, Old Peg took a sharp look at Pauley Wiseman. Sure enough, he squirmed in his chair like he had a bad itch in a place where a gentleman doesn't scratch. That's right, Pauley Wiseman. Dr. Physicker can say what he likes, but I know you, and there was one, at least, who had all kinds of objections to Arthur Stuart.

Whitley Physicker went on talking, of course. Since he was pretending that everybody loved Arthur Stuart dearly, he couldn't very well take notice of how uncomfortable Sheriff Pauley was.

“We know Arthur has been raised by the two oldest settlers and finest citizens of Hatrack River, and the whole town loves him for his own self. We just can't think what benefit a school education would give the boy.”

“It'll give him the same benefit it gives any other boy or girl,” said Old Peg.

“Will it? Will his knowing how to read and write get him a place in a counting house? Can you imagine that even if they let him take the bar, any jury would listen to a Black lawyer plead? Society has decreed that a Black child will grow up to be a Black man, and a Black man, like ancient Adam, will earn his bread by the sweat of his body, not by the labors of his mind.”

“Arthur Stuart is smarter than any child who'll be in that school and you know it.”

“All the more reason we shouldn't build up young Arthur's hopes, only to have them dashed when he's older. I'm talking about the way of the world, Goody Guester, not the way of the heart.”

“Well why don't you wise men of the school board just say, To hell with the way of the world, we'll do what's right! I can't make you do what you don't want to do, but I'll be damned if I let you pretend it's for Arthur's own good!”

Horace winced. He didn't like it to hear Old Peg swear. She'd only taken it up lately, beginning with the time she cussed Millicent Mercher right in public for insisting on being called “Mistress Mercher” instead of “Goody Mercher.” It didn't sit well with Horace, her using those words, especially since she didn't seem to ken the time and place for it like a man would, or at least so he said. But Old Peg figured if you can't cuss at a lying hypocrite, then what was cussing invented for?

Pauley Wiseman started turning red, barely controlling a stream of his own favorite cusswords. But Whitley Physicker was now a gentleman, so he merely bowed his head for a moment, like as if he was saying a prayer, but Old Peg figured it was more likely he was waiting till he calmed down enough for his words to come out civil. “Goody Guester, you're right. We didn't think up that story about it being for Arthur's own good till after the decision was made.”

His frankness left her without a word, at least for the moment. Even Sheriff Pauley could only give out a kind of squeak. Whitley Physicker wasn't sticking to what they all agreed to say; he sounded espiciously close to telling the truth, and Sheriff Pauley didn't know what to do when people started throwing the truth around loose and dangerous. Old Peg enjoyed watching Pauley Wiseman look like a fool, it being something for which old Pauley had a particular knack.