"Of course. You mustn't sleep another night in a darky's house."
"Oh," Hertha gasped.
Until now she had been thinking of herself in her relation to the white world. The past night had racked her, body and spirit, and to-day had brought release. She was white, she was rich, she had a name. Now, at Miss Patty's words she saw that in the world she was to enter she must walk alone. Her mother, the only mother she had ever known, who had given her home and food and tender care, who had prepared her breakfast for her that morning, who had washed the dress she had on, who had kissed her when she went away and told her not to work so hard, that her mammy could always make enough to care for them both—this mother was a "darky" under whose roof she must not sleep again.
"I'm going home," she said; and without another word left them.
"Poor little thing," remarked Miss Witherspoon, "it's very grand to be white, but she will find it lonely."
"Perhaps at first," the other answered, "but she'll soon get used to things. When I was little I cared more for Lindy, our cook's little girl, than for any one else in the world. We two played together the whole day long. She was a dear child, with big soft eyes and a laughing mouth. What fun we used to have! And if we got into a scrape her mammy'd see to it that no one knew more about it than was good for them. I cried my eyes out the day my mother said I was too old to play with Lindy any more. For months I couldn't bear to go by a pine tree where we'd had our best times together. And when I'd see Lindy she'd look so wistfully at me! But other things came to fill my life and they'll come to fill Hertha's."
"It's not at all the same thing," Miss Witherspoon said, "you had your home."
"And Hertha will make hers. You shall see."