"Yes we can!" she declared, the tears in her eyes. "We've often walked out together." The service with the memories that it called up had shaken her. She had felt her lips trembling more than once this morning and now a rebuff was hard to bear.
"Jes' wait a minute," Tom said. "I'm thinking."
The familiar phrase sent back the tears and brought a smile. Realizing that she must bide her time and confident that Tom would find a way out of any difficulty she stood aside, watching the congregation as it stopped to speak with friend or neighbor or went quickly on its way.
It was the first time she had been to a Negro quarter since her advent to New York and in a short two hours she was wholly at home. Happy in the welcome that came from one after another in the congregation, her loneliness disappeared, and she returned "good mornings" without embarrassment. Before Tom had finished his thinking, two little brown-skinned girls, whose spotless white dresses and gaily flowered white hats were not more fresh and bright than their shining faces, made friends with her. They stood, one on either hand, fingering her dress, and the younger, who was an alert child, asked more than one pertinent question. "Where you run to, chillen?" their mother demanded as she came up, and the soft dialect made Hertha feel as though the query had been addressed to her. As the little girls moved away she turned the question over in her mind, asking it of herself. In these seven months since she had closed the door upon the colored world what path had she taken, down what road had she been running, with whom had she stopped to talk on her way? Naturally mistrustful of herself, she began to question whether she had done any better than one of these children who stopped with her for a moment and then ran on to some new happening.
"I bin fixing to stay here," Tom said coming up to her after a few minutes' absence. "The sexton, he's a friend of mine, and if I lock up after me I can stay right on in the church."
It was a pleasant place to stop for a talk. The windows were open, the air was fresh, and though this auditorium was far larger and more sumptuous than any they had been accustomed to in their childhood, it seemed a natural and good spot for a sober chat.
"Perhaps I'd better tell you about everything that's happened," Hertha declared as they sat down well at the front. Tom nodded assent, and she began her narrative, haltingly at first, but, as she went on, filling it with incidents of her life with Kathleen, her work in the factory, and her decision to move and to study a profession. On her failure to do good work at stenography she laid much emphasis and ended by asking for advice regarding the best way to earn her living.
Tom looked at her soberly and yet somewhere back she felt that there was a hint of a smile.
"You haven't told me about your feller," he declared after she had finished.
During her recital Hertha had been looking straight ahead at the pulpit with its reading-desk and red plush cushion on which rested a huge Bible. Now she turned in her seat and addressed herself directly to Tom.