“Yes, I know, honey,” Miss Jane said sympathetically. “He was a right nice boy. He used to come here to sell my mother vegetables. He’d fix everything to sell as neat and nice, and he’d tell about the doings around his way until we’d almost die laughing. I’ve often wondered if he took to gardening up North.”
“We had a tiny garden where we lived,” Hazel answered eagerly, “and father worked in it in the early morning before he went to business. He was a lawyer, you know.”
“A lawyer?”
“Yes, ma’am, a lawyer.”
“A nigger lawyer! That beats all. Marty,” calling into the darkness, “did you know Aunt Ellen’s son, George, used to be a nigger lawyer?”
“Yes, Miss Jane; I sure knowed.”
“This is his child. Make her a cup of warm coffee and give her some biscuits. She’s come a long way.”
The coffee, an unfamiliar but delectable drink, warmed not only Hazel’s body, but her heart. The two sisters did not leave the kitchen, but plied her with questions which she answered, trying to remember what Granny had told her. Here were two women living alone in a big house with few neighbors; they were giving her food and she ought to talk if they wanted her to. So she told them about her former home, and the flat in Hammond Street, and her mother’s present work.
“Seems to me your father ought to have left something if he had a practice,” the younger sister, whose name was Laura, remarked.
“He did,” Hazel answered quickly; “but mother won’t touch anything but the interest, and you know what seems a good deal of money makes a very little interest. She spent some to send me down here, and she’s planning to spend more to send me to college.”