“This is the governor’s estate,” said Mr. Wales presently. “Did you know this was the governor’s estate, young ladies?”
The young ladies had not known it. They were straightway all interest, and were greatly disappointed to hear that the governor’s grounds were private.
“Still we can see a lot from here,” said Helen. “What is that tree with those lovely red blossoms? And what is that purple vine?”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Wales, “but we’ll ask this woman.”
So they waited for the negro woman who was swinging up the hill toward them at a fast walk. On her head she carried a great flat wooden tray filled with dozens of tomatoes, some eggs, and a few heads of lettuce. Under one arm she had tucked away a big white hen, and in the other hand she carried some slices of fish, strung on a forked stick.
“My, but she must have a big family!” said Bob, when the woman had answered their questions and hurried on. “It would take a whole regiment of children to eat all those tomatoes.”
“Let’s follow her,” suggested Roberta. “Then perhaps we can take the children’s pictures. I brought along a whole lot of coppers.”
The woman turned in at one of the first of the little houses that suddenly began to crowd the road at the foot of the next hill, and she had no children at all, so she informed the inquiring Bob. She kept a store. That is to say, a big table was set across the room, just inside the open door of her cottage, and on this improvised counter she was arranging her wares when the visitors came up with her. The girls found that there were any number of these little shops in Grant’s Town. Every morning the proprietors, starting often before daylight, went down to the market for supplies, and the neighborhood saved itself the long walk through the sun by patronizing the little local stores. Other negro women carried their heaped-up trays through the white settlement, bringing to their regular customers the choicest fruits and vegetables that the day’s market afforded. So it soon grew to seem perfectly natural to see eggs, oranges, tomatoes, and other kinds of “rolling stock,” as Mary flippantly named them, carried about on the heads of graceful, swiftly moving negresses, who stopped to chat with their friends, laughed, talked, turned their heads unconcernedly this way and that, but never spilled anything.
The adventurous Bob made friends with an old woman who sold cocoanut cakes on the streets near their hotel. One day when the girls had bought out nearly all her supply, Bob persuaded her to empty the tray and let her try to carry it. Before Bob had taken three steps the tray toppled, slipped, and banged down hard on her toes.
“Goodness!” she said, as she picked it up, “I’m glad I don’t live in a country where you have to carry things this way. Suppose that tray had been full of eggs!”