“Connie, who does Mammy know in South Riveredge?”
“Nobody, that I know of,” answered Constance unsuspectingly.
“I thought she had a cousin living there,” was the next leader.
“A cousin, child! Why Mammy hasn’t a relative this side of Raleigh and I don’t believe she has two to her name down there. If she has, she hasn’t seen them since mother brought her north before we were born.”
“I knew it!” was the triumphant retort, “and now I’ll get even with her for telling me fibs.”
“Jean, what do you mean?” cried Constance now fully alive to the fact that she had fallen into a trap.
“I mean just this: I’ve been watching Mammy drive off to South Riveredge every solitary week since before Thanksgiving, and I’ve asked her ever so many times to take me with her; she lets me go everywhere else with her and Baltie. But she wouldn’t take me there and when I asked her why not, she always said because she was going to visit with her cousins in-the-Lord, and ’twan’t no fit place for white folks. I knew she was telling a fib, and now I’m going right down stairs to tell her so,” and Jean whirled about to run from the room. Constance made a wild dive and caught her by her sleeve.
“Jean, stop! Listen to me. You are not to bother Mammy with questions. She has a perfect right to do or go as she chooses,” said Constance with some warmth, and instantly realized that she had taken the wrong tack, for the little pepper-pot began to liven up. Jerking herself free she struck an attitude, saying:
“You are just as bad as Mammy! You know where she goes, and what she goes for, but you won’t tell me. Keep your old secrets if you want to, but I’ll find out, see if I don’t. And I’ll get even too. You and Mammy think I’m nothing but a baby, but you’ll see. I’m most eleven years old, and if I can’t be told the truth about things now, I’d like to know why,” and with a final vigorous wrench Jean freed herself from her sister’s grasp and fled down the stairs, Constance murmuring to herself as the little whirlwind disappeared: “I wonder if it wouldn’t be wiser to let her into the secret after all? In the first place it is all nonsense to keep it a secret, and just one of Mammy’s high-falutin ideas of what’s right and proper for a Blairsdale. Fiddlesticks for the Blairsdales say I, when certain things should be done. I’m going to tell that child anyway. She is ten times easier to deal with when she knows the truth, and she can keep a secret far better than some older people I might mention. Jean; Jean; come back; I want to tell you something.”
But Jean had gone beyond hearing. “Never mind; I’ll tell her by-and-by,” resolved Constance and soon forgot all about the matter while completing her English theme for Monday. Could she have followed her small sister her state of mind would have been less serene.