"You know as well as I do that it isn't that."
"It sounds like that to me. I like my work. Why should I accept a lot of responsibility, set up a shop, which I should hate, or go about making cheap gowns for stout black people when I can stay at home and wait on a sweet, refined person like my mistress?"
The "my mistress" was given with an emphasis that closed the subject. Ellen had said that her sister was not a child like Tom, and for the time at least she must accept the verdict against her.
"Well, chillen," their mother said as they came up to the cabin, "de best o' news, a letter f'om Tom!"
They both were upon her, but Hertha got the letter.
"Mister Lee were walkin' dis-a-way an' bring it ter me. It were kind o' him; he knowed I wan' ter see it mighty quick."
"How short!" Hertha said, reading it through rapidly.
Mammy was at once up in arms for her son. "What done you 'spec'? Dar's de paper civered. He tells 'bout de journey, an' what he gits fer his meals, an' how big de ocean look, an' how he can't rightly say no mo' 'kase de bell done ring fer chapel. Dat a heap, but it ain't much fer waitin' hearts."
"He doesn't say what studies he's taking," Ellen remarked when she had finished with the sheet.
"We're foolish, Mammy," Hertha exclaimed, seeing the disappointment on the old woman's face. "It's a dear letter, and it's Tom's handwriting—I'd know it in Timbuctoo. Oh, how I wish he were here!"