“But, Walter, how horrid they are! We see so few of them in New England that they don’t seem like these. How dreadfully black and brutal they are. Let us go inside, I really am afraid!” cried Lucy in a low voice and started to retreat.
At that moment a tall and very black woman who held a baby at her breast, negro-like, carried away by thoughtless good nature and admiration for the lovely stranger, raised her ink-colored picaninny, and in motherly pride thrust it forward until its little wooly black head almost touched Lucy’s bosom.
With one glance of loathing, terror and unconcealed horror at the object resting nearly on her breast, Lucy gave a scream of fear and fled. Throwing herself on one of the settees in the car she buried her face among the cushions and wept solely from fright and nervousness.
“Why! sweetheart, what is the matter? There is nothing to fear. Those poor people were only admiring you, my darling,” cried Burton hurrying to his young wife’s side and seeking to quiet her fears.
“I can’t help it, Walter, all those black faces crowded together near to me was awful, and that dreadful little black thing almost touched me,” sobbed Lucy nervously.
“Darling, the dreadful little black thing was only a harmless baby,” replied the husband soothingly.
“Baby!” cried the astonished young woman, lifting her head from the cushions and regarding her companion through her undried tears with doubt, as if suspecting him of joking. “I thought it was an ape or some hideous little imp! Baby!” and seeing that there was no joke about what her husband said, she added:
“I didn’t know negroes looked like that when babies. I would not touch that loathsome, horrid thing for worlds. It made my flesh fairly quiver to see it even near me.”
Walter Burton succeeded in allaying the alarm of his wife only after the train had resumed its rapid journey southward. When Lucy, lulled to sleep by the low music of the guitar which he played to distract her attention from the unpleasant recollection, no longer demanded his presence, Burton sought the smoking-room of the car and passed an hour in solemn, profound meditation, as he puffed continuously fragrant Havanas.