Hazel was silent for a few seconds. When she answered her voice was unsteady.
“Nobody knows how angry I am, right through, when anyone calls me a nigger.”
“And yet, honey, I’s heard a forlorn, ignorant mammy say it to her baby when it sounded like she were whispering to the Lord. It’s an ugly word. I hates it, too. But there’s white folks as don’t mean any harm by it. You fell in good hands to-day, and I thank the Lord for it. There’s those as might have spoken slick enough but as would have been rough in their hearts.”
Hazel gave Granny a hug.
“I do love you, Granny,” she said with a little sob, “and I’ll forget all the horrid things to-day, and remember the coffee and the fire and Miss Laura showing me those three poor little stuffed birds. But Granny;” brightening, “what do you think was in their parlor? Why, right there in the company room in that great big house they had a bed!”
CHAPTER X
SPRING
Hazel awoke one morning to find it spring. She had seen it beginning, but she had not fully recognized it until now. A mocking bird told her all about it. He sat on a rosebush and chattered so fast and so gaily and as it seemed to Hazel of such a number of happenings, that she hurried through breakfast to learn what it was all about. And then she saw that spring had come.
“Granny, look!” she cried excitedly. “Everything is growing. The leaves are jumping out, just as fast, and the flowers are opening and the birds are singing, singing! Why that mocking bird”—she stopped for the highest praise she could command, “Why that mocking bird is lots jollier than any birds we have near Boston.”
“Well, sugar,” said Granny, “I’s glad to know once when the South come out on top.”
“Why, Granny,” Hazel went on, disregarding the gentle sarcasm, “our teacher used to take us out in the spring to hear the bluebirds and song sparrows, and they just twitter, twitter like little birds, but that mocking bird!”