"I 'most wish she was a baby again," Tom ventured. "We-all had good times when we was children."
The virtuous retort regarding a life of service that Ellen would have given a year ago died upon her lips. During the months of their separation she saw that Tom had grown fast in stature and understanding.
"Seems sometimes," he went on in his meditative way, "as if the world'd be better if no one was allowed to grow up. But there's some as can't help it. You couldn't keep them little children, not if you put a hundred pound weight on their heads."
There was a sound from the room within. "I'm coming out soon," a voice said, "and I'm hungry enough to eat two meals in one."
When to the satisfaction of both she had accomplished this feat, the three went to the porch again and sat together in the starlight.
Thus far they had exchanged no word as to their future; there had been no opportunity for the privacy of confidence. Now it was possible to talk into the night without interruption. But the quiet about them, the sense of rest after the days of sorrowful turmoil, the nearness of their grief, kept them for some time bereft of words. It was Ellen who first took up the thought in all their minds.
"We shall have to leave the home here now," she said. "There's no one but me left, and I've a position waiting for me any moment that I say I'll go."
"Where?" Hertha asked, startled.
"In Georgia. Augusta Fairfax, you remember Augusta, don't you, Hertha? She was in the class below me. Such a bright girl! She's started a school by herself and wants me to join her. It's in the most godforsaken spot in the United States, not a bit like this, one of those places where the whites hate schools and want to keep the Negroes always ignorant. They make everything as difficult as possible for Augusta, but she has more pluck than all the white folks in the county. Her scholars are all ages, she says, from four to forty. They're ignorant of everything that they need to know and their knowledge of the things they ought not to know is prodigious; but they've the one thing essential, a desire to improve. Augusta is bound to succeed if the whites only give her time."
"They may lynch her first," Tom suggested.