od a family
as the Merryvales."

"Miss Patty, I'm afraid I can't sit down and talk about it now."

"Of course, you must be excited, though you appear wonderfully calm.
Don't you want to lie down on my bed?"

"No, I think I want to go home."

"Very well, you'll want to tell your mammy. And then you can begin
packing your things."

"Packing my things?"

"Of course. You mustn't sleep another night in a darky's house."

"Oh," Hertha gasped.

Until now she had been thinking of herself in her relation to the white
world. The past night had racked her, body and spirit, and to-day had
brought release. She was white, she was rich, she had a name. Now, at
Miss Patty's words she saw that in the world she was to enter she must
walk alone. Her mother, the only mother she had ever known, who had
given her home and food and tender care, who had prepared her breakfast
for her that morning, who had washed the dress she had on, who had
kissed her when she went away and told her not to work so hard, that her
mammy could always make enough to care for them both--this mother was a
"darky" under whose roof she must not sleep again.

"I'm going home," she said; and without another word left them.

"Poor little thing," remarked Miss Witherspoon, "it's very grand to be
white, but she will find it lonely."

"Perhaps at first," the other answered, "but she'll soon get used to
things. When I was little I cared more for Lindy, our cook's little
girl, than for any one else in the world. We two played together the
whole day long. She was a dear child, with big soft eyes and a laughing
mouth. What fun we used to have! And if we got into a scrape her mammy'd
see to it that no one knew more about it than was good for them. I cried
my eyes out the day my mother said I was too old to play with Lindy any
more. For months I couldn't bear to go by a pine tree where we'd had our
best times together. And when I'd see Lindy she'd look so wistfully at
me! But other things came to fill my life and they'll come to fill
Hertha's."

"It's not at all the same thing," Miss Witherspoon said, "you had your
home."

"And Hertha will make hers. You shall see."

CHAPTER X

Hurrying past the kitchen and by the cabins, Hertha's mind began to work
quickly. At first she had been too full of the remembrance of the
previous night to recognize fully what had befallen her; but now, with a
sharp delight that carried pain with it, she saw herself in the wh