"Indeed!" cried Mildred, smiling pleasantly upon Constance. "Your sister does me too much honor."
"Not a bit. I am glad to know you, and shall be pleased to become better acquainted as time goes on. I am told that you are selling a good book. I have observed advertisements of the same some time ago, and will be delighted to read it."
Mildred smiled pleasantly, hesitated, and then said: "Every one I sell to report that they love the book. I do myself. I think it is such a frank and unbiased story, and told so simply, that anyone can understand it; yet with a touching human interest that is, in a measure, vital to us all. Even persons more highly gifted can learn something from it, and be entertained as well."
"She has sold over a hundred copies in three weeks, which I think is extraordinary, don't you?" said Constance at this point, whereupon Mildred looked slightly embarrassed. She always did when anyone spoke in praise of her.
"Extraordinary, excellent, I should say," her brother smiled. "Where does she find such good customers?"
"I work among the women in domestic service," Mildred explained. Wilson looked surprised.
"Indeed! And do you find many readers among them? You have not been to many of the teachers?"
"I have, yes; but they do not seem to take much interest in work by Negroes, so far as I have been able to gather. I could not say for sure, of course not; but I do find the women in service, in great numbers, to be fond of reading and full of race pride. Of course, there are multitudes of ignorant ones who are not capable of appreciating literature and its value as moral uplift, but, as a whole, I am highly successful."
Wilson Jacobs was greatly moved by his first conversation with Mildred, and found himself thinking about her more than once in the days that followed. His sister became so deeply interested in her, that after a week had passed, she had taken up the work also.
"Do you ever play, Miss Latham?" inquired Constance a few days afterward, and late one afternoon, when they had returned from their work.