But why was she alone? Out under the cedar trees were Pink and Chloe and little Midge “playing supper” with persimmons and chincapins, and breaking out now and then into song as naturally as the mocking-birds themselves. They had viewed Claudie from afar with round, admiring eyes, reserved the biggest chincapins for her use, and Pink had even ventured to say “Howdy?” but the little stranger stood aloof. Not a cross word or a naughty one had any of the children spoken, and they looked as clean and neat as Claudie herself would have looked had she been eating very ripe persimmons as freely as they. Pink’s black eyes were as full of fun and sparkle as Claudie’s blue ones, and her face as bright, and yet playing with these children was the very thing Claudie had said she could never, never do!
I really don’t like to tell you her reason, she would be so ashamed of it now. It was just because their merry little faces were colored black instead of white!
Now Claudie would never have been so foolish if she had not heard some grown-up people talking after this fashion just before she left the North:
“I really don’t see how dear Mrs. Faith, with her refined tastes, can live among the blacks,” said one.
“Think of eating at the same table, and actually touching them! It fairly makes me shiver,” echoed another, who sat with one arm around a big Newfoundland dog while she fed him with candy.
And after Mrs. Faith, with tears in her eyes, had told the story of her work and described her love and respect for her colored friends, another lady smilingly said:
“I have enjoyed your talk so much, Mrs. Faith; but I don’t envy you in the least. I know I couldn’t endure the negroes.”
Claudie was not old enough to understand that people who talk in this way are not the best or the wisest or the most refined people, and so their words influenced her. She was a very sociable little body, however, and playing alone soon grew dull. It was hot on the veranda, and, too, indeed, that shady nook under the cedars seemed the only cool spot in the yard just then, and how cunning little Midge did look!
“No second-class on board the train,
No difference in the fare,”
piped Pink, gleefully, as she set her table with gouber shells for plates.