And then, after a pause,
another voice:

"_No, not one!_"

Hope Carolina jumped in bed, trembling.

Presently Mrs. Preston went, and then everybody else went to bed. But
still Hope Carolina trembled. For that was exactly what Miss Polly and
Miss Sally Graham had said--_about the white face_.

After a while she knew. It meant, oh, the mightiest, biggest disgrace
on earth not to have white people at your funerals. They went to black
funerals, even--_good_ black funerals.

"Oh!" moaned Hope Carolina suddenly, loud enough for everybody to
hear. But she cried silently. It was a way she had.

She cried again in the night, too--so loudly everybody did hear; but
the dream mother who came and loved her, putting her head on the dear
place, drove away all the lumps in her throat. After that the dark was
still like the dear place, and like arms around her, too.

She had forgotten the dream mother when breakfast came; but she hadn't
forgotten the other thing--the thing about the white face.

Ma said anxiously once to Uncle John, "Do you think she can be sick,
brother?" and Uncle John shook his head, though he knew, too, of the
tearful night.

Hope Carolina sat very still, not seeming to hear even when Ma
announced that the funeral was at nine o'clock. She ate her breakfast
like a ravenous cherub, smiling silently, mysteriously, whenever her
mother looked at her with adoring eyes. Sometimes these dear, watching
eyes, as blue as jewels, set wide apart under a low brow crowned with
waved, satin-bright brown hair, filled slowly. But the darling child,
who had certainly proved her excellent condition, only grinned back
sweetly. All Hope Carolina was thinking of was that she had a
_hole_--she was still wearing the soiled pink calico--and that her
frilled white apron was mussed, and that shoe-strings wouldn't tie
good. In the tarnished gilt-framed mirror behind Ma's lovely head she
could see her own. _That_ was all right; beautiful! She had doused it
with water, the round baby poll, and plastered the short hair smooth,
so that under this close, shining cap her apple cheeks seemed fresher
than ever.

Ma kissed them in passing, going then swiftly, with her eyes closed
tight lest she herself should see, to shut windows on _that_ side of
the house. Hope Carolina knew. Children mustn't look out of windows
when funerals were going on. They mustn't play in the yard, either,
till after they were over.

The big clock in the corner t