Mrs. Loving (Resuming her sewing; sitting before the machine). Yes. I was rather curious, I confess, to see this son of hers. The whole time I’m fitting her she talks of nothing else. She worships him. (Pauses). It’s rather a sad case, I believe. She is a widow. Her husband was a doctor and left her a little money. She came up from the South to educate this boy. Both of them worked hard and the boy got through college. Three months he hunted for work that a college man might expect to get. You see he had the tremendous handicap of being colored. As the two of them had to live, one day, without her knowing it, he hired himself out as a waiter. He has been one now for two years. He is evidently goodness itself to his mother.
Rachel (Slowly and thoughtfully): Just because he is colored! (Pauses). We sing a song at school, I believe, about “The land of the free and the home of the brave.” What an amusing nation it is.
Mrs. Loving (Watching Rachel anxiously): Come, Rachel, you haven’t time for “amusing nations.” Remember, you haven’t practised any this afternoon. And put your books away; don’t leave them on the table. You didn’t practise any this morning either, did you?
Rachel: No, Ma dear,—didn’t wake up in time. (Goes to the table and in an abstracted manner puts books on the bookcase; returns to the table; picks up the roll of sheet music she has brought home with her; brightens; impulsively) Ma dear, just listen to this lullaby. It’s the sweetest thing. I was so “daffy” over it, one of the girls at school lent it to me. (She rushes to the piano with the music and plays the accompaniment through softly and then sings, still softly and with great expression, Jessie Gaynor’s “Slumber Boat”)—
Baby’s boat’s the silver moon;
Sailing in the sky,
Sailing o’er the sea of sleep,
While the clouds float by.
Sail, baby, sail,
Out upon that sea,