“An’ my mamma is in Hebben, too, an’ she wears a collarette,” chimed in Chloe with much importance; “but Hebben isn’t on the mountains; it’s in England!”
Claudie had just opened her mouth to dispute this remarkable statement, when Pink took up the argument:
“Chloe doesn’t know nuffin ’bout it,” she laughed. “She just thinks that ’cause cousin Emma went to England in a big ship with a heap of colored people to sing, an’ she said ev’rybody was so good it seemed just like Heaven, and nobody seemed to notice that they weren’t as white as anybody, an’ she saw the queen, an’ she went to dinner with white folks in splendid big houses, an’ a white gen’leman took her out to dinner hisself, an’ treated her ’zactly like a white lady; an’ she says, ‘’magine me in Washington an’ Gene’l Sherman taking me out to dinner!’”
Pink stopped breathless.
“But she did say it were sure ’nuff Hebben dere! You didn’t tell it all, Pink Symond,” persisted Chloe, indignantly.
“Yes,” said Pink, more soberly, “she did say that when they came home an’ she had to ride in smoking cars, an’ couldn’t go to table with white folks at hotels, an’ was treated just like we all are, she thought England must be Heaven sure enough, ’cause everybody says this is the freest country outside of Heaven!”
Just then this theological discussion was ended by the sound of the dinner-bells, and Pink and Claudie, with arms lovingly around each other, walked slowly toward the house.
“Of such is the kingdom of Heaven,” murmured Uncle Faith as he watched them from his study window, and the tired look on his face faded away and something came instead that made Claudie say wonderingly—
“Oh, Uncle Faith, you look like—like the apostle John!”
“I think Pink is perfectly beautiful, Auntie,” whispered Claudie at her bedtime talk that night, “and I do wish those ladies at home could see her. You know, Auntie”—the fair face flushing—“I was so ignorant ’bout the colored people this morning, and I didn’t know any better, and I s’pose that’s just the way with those ladies. Isn’t there some way we could tell them, Auntie, that the colored people are just like us, and that they don’t seem so very colored after all?”