"They don't often lynch women," was Ellen's answer.
"You aren't going to a place like that?" There was alarm in Hertha's voice.
"Why not? Life isn't worth much to black people unless they're doing hard, absorbing work. Tom was saying just now that we ought all to stay children, but there are some of us who have to grow up."
"I wasn't just thinking of colored folks," Tom struck in. "I was thinking of everybody."
"I reckon I know what you were thinking of, that picture in our old Bible with the little child leading the wolf and the lamb, the leopard and the kid, the calf and the young lion. You used to love that picture. Well, I hope for that day; but in the meantime here are all these Americans making laws to keep colored children so that they won't know enough to do anything but lie down and be eaten. The prophet didn't mean to have the lamb stay with the wolf if the wolf was only prepared to gobble him up!"
Ellen laughed at her own conceit. "Augusta and I aren't lambs," she announced, "or kids either; and we're both from the South and have a little sense in our heads. She's made a start, but she needs some one with her for she's dying of loneliness. I've often thought I'd go there when I was no longer needed at home."
"Could I go too?" Hertha's voice was almost inaudible.
"You, dear? I don't believe we could have a white teacher. The white people wouldn't stand for it."
"I wouldn't be white," Hertha answered. "I'd be colored."
Ellen turned and kissed her. "I know what you did for Tom. If I worked until I was a hundred in the meanest spot in the Union I wouldn't be doing as brave a thing as you have done."