"I'm glad we're going, aren't you, Marian?" asked Beth, as they descended from the carriage at the station.
"I guess so," answered Marian doubtfully, remembering the friends she was leaving behind, perhaps forever.
Mr. Davenport already had their tickets, and the family immediately boarded a sleeper bound for Jacksonville.
Beth loved to travel, and soon was on speaking terms with every one on the car. She hesitated slightly about being friends with the porter. He made her think of the first colored person she had ever seen. She remembered even now how the man's rolling black eyes had frightened her, although it was the blackness of his skin that had impressed her the most. She believed that he had become dirty, the way she sometimes did, only in a greater degree.
"Mamma," she whispered, "I never get as black as that man, do I? Do you s'pose he ever washes himself?"
Mrs. Davenport explained that cleanliness had nothing to do with the man's blackness.
"Is he black inside?" Beth questioned in great awe.
"No. All people are alike at heart. Clean thinking makes even the black man white within, dear."
Beth had not seen another colored person from that time until this. Therefore, she was a little doubtful about making up with the porter. But he proved so very genial that before night arrived, he and "little missy," as he called Beth, were so very friendly that he considered her his special charge.
That night both children slept as peacefully as if they had been in their own home.