"It isn't half the fun going to school now that you don't come, Sylvia," responded Flora, as the three friends went up the broad staircase together. "Mammy," with her baskets, followed them, and when she had helped her little mistress lay aside her cape and hat, Flora said:
"You can go home now, Mammy, And my mother will tell you when to come after me."
"Yas, Missy," responded the old colored woman, and with a curtsey to each of the little girls she left the room.
"What makes your mammy look so sober, Flora?" questioned Grace. "She is usually all smiles; but to-day she hasn't a word to say for herself."
"Oh, the darkies are all stirred up over all this talk about their being set free," Flora answered, "and even Mammy, who was Mother's nurse, and has always been well taken care of, thinks it would be a fine thing for her children and grandchildren to be 'jes' like white folks,'" and Flora laughed scornfully.
"But that needn't make her look sober!" insisted Grace.
"I reckon she's upset because my mother sold two or three little slaves yesterday—Mammy's grandchildren," Flora answered carelessly.
Sylvia could feel her face flushing, and she said over to herself that no matter what Flora said that she, Sylvia, must remember that Flora was her guest. Beside that, had not Flora taken off the blue cockade so that Sylvia would not be reminded of the trouble at school?
But Grace felt no such restraints. She was a southern girl as well as
Flora, but she was sorry for the old colored woman.
"Well, I do wish we could keep the pickaninnies until they grow up. It seems a shame when they feel so bad to be sold off to strangers. And some of them are abused too," she said.