Hazel had heard the name in the course of their conversation, and felt pleased to be able to use it.
But Miss Fairmount felt differently.
“My name is Jane,” she said. “You should call me Miss Jane.”
“Not Miss Fairmount?”
“Certainly not. It is impertinent in a nigger.”
The blood rushed to Hazel’s face. She felt as though someone had struck her. Rising from her chair she said in an unsteady voice, “I must go home now. Granny will be anxious. Please tell me what road to take?”
Night had come on and the lamps were lighted.
“You don’t suppose we’d let you go home alone, child,” Miss Jane said. “Marty ’ll take you. Marty, you get on your shawl and take Hazel to Aunt Ellen’s. It’s not far beyond your house. Laura, show Hazel the birds in the parlor. Maybe she’d like to look at them.”
Miss Laura took up a lamp, and led the child into the parlor, where she had been sitting when Hazel entered the house. The walls were bare of pictures and the furniture was heavy and decayed. In one corner was a table on which was a glass case containing three stuffed birds, a mocker, a humming bird and a cardinal. Hazel admired appreciatively, but her eyes would wander across the room where stood a huge four-poster, covered with an elaborate spread.
“They’re very pretty,” she said politely. “Granny tells me I must hear the mocking birds in the spring. We don’t have mocking birds in Massachusetts.”