So my feet turned me right in, like your feet do sometimes, and I rang the front bell.
"Here," says I, to that colored servant that opened the door, "is a posy I thought your folks might like to see waiting for them."
He started to speak, but somebody else spoke first.
"How friendly!" said a nice-soft voice—I noticed the voice particular. "Let me thank her."
There came out from the shadow of the hall, a woman—the one with the lovely voice.
"I am Mrs. Fernandez—this is good of you," she said, and put out her hands for the plant.
I gave it to her, and I don't believe I looked surprised, any more than when I first saw the pictures of the Disciples, that the artist had painted their skin dark, like it must have been. Mrs. Fernandez was dark too. But her people had come, not from Asia, but from Africa.
Like a flash, I saw what this was going to mean in the village. And in the second that I stood there, without time to think it through, something told me to go in, and try to get some idea of what was going to be what.
"May I come inside now I'm here?" I says.
She took me into the room that was the most settled of any. The piano was there, and a good many books on their shelves. As I remember back now, I must just have stood and stared at them, for impressions were chasing each other across my head like waves on a heaving sea. No less than that, and mebbe more.