CHAPTER VII
Judith Makes a Hit
Judith reached home in time to prepare an excellent basket supper for her motormen customers. She was determined that her food should be so good it would advertise itself and every employe on the line would demand service. All of the potatoes were not peeled when she was ready for them, but her mother’s explanation was that it seemed a pity to peel potatoes because there was so much waste in that method. It really was better to cook them in the skins. Judith kissed her and laughed.
“Another time we’ll cook them in their jackets, Mumsy dear, but I cleared enough money this morning to afford to waste a few potato peelings. If I have a week of such luck, I’ll have to get in more supplies. The girls in this county are just eating up my vanishing cream and my liquid powder that won’t rub off. I’ve made a great hit with my anti-kink lotion with the poor colored people. Half the female world is trying to get curled and the 78 other half trying to get uncurled. I have got rid of dozens and dozens of marcel wavers, the steel kind that must dig into you fearfully at night, and bottle after bottle of that quince seed lotion, warranted to keep hair in curl for an all-day picnic, where it usually rains, and, if it doesn’t, you fall in the creek to even up.”
“Judy, you take my breath away with such talk and such goings on. I can’t bear to think of your selling things to negroes. There is no telling what might happen to you if you don’t look out.”
Mrs. Buck had an instinctive dislike for the colored race. She never trusted them and was opposed even to employing them for farm work. She preferred the most disreputable poor white to the best negro. It was a prejudice inherited from her father and mother, who on first coming to Kentucky had done much talking about the down-trodden blacks, but being unable to understand them had never been able to get along with them.
Old Dick Buck had said of Mr. and Mrs. Ezra Knight, “They’ve got mighty high ideas about negroes but they ain’t got a bit of use for a nigger.”
Judith shared none of this prejudice. She liked colored people and they liked her and 79 respected her. As she went speeding along the roads in her little blue car, there was never a darkey old or young who did not wish her well and bow low to her friendly greeting. Only that morning she had given a lift to a bent old man who was on his way to Mr. Big Josh Bucknor’s, and thereby saved him many a weary mile.