"Yes, and then there's Mrs. Vanderpool's check."
"How much is that?"
Zora paused; she did not know. In her world there was little calculation of money. Credit and not cash is the currency of the Black Belt. She had been pleased to receive the check, but she had not examined it.
"I really don't know," she presently confessed. "I think it was one thousand dollars; but I was so hurried in leaving that I didn't look carefully," and the wild thought surged in her, suppose it was more!
She ran into the other room and plunged into her trunk; beneath the clothes, beneath the beauty of the Silver Fleece, till her fingers clutched and tore the envelope. A little choking cry burst from her throat, her knees trembled so that she was obliged to sit down.
In her fingers fluttered a check for—ten thousand dollars!
It was not until the next day that the two women were sufficiently composed to talk matters over sanely.
"What is your plan?" asked Zora.
"To put the money in a Northern savings bank at three per cent interest; to supply the rest of the interest, and the deficit in the running expenses, from our balance, and to send you North to beg."
Zora shook her head. "It won't do," she objected. "I'd make a poor beggar; I don't know human nature well enough, and I can't talk to rich white folks the way they expect us to talk."