," he called out, "I've read _Sherlock Holmes_.
It's great!"

"I'm glad you liked it," she replied, "and I'll try to find another good
story for you next Saturday evening."

He went away rapturously happy in having won the chance to know so
beautiful a southern girl. Whether she lived as a worker in a tenement
or as a companion in an old family mansion, she was the most refined
person he had ever met and he planned great days when they should be
together. The rain fell unheeded. Despite the bright light from the
electric lamp, he walked into a deep puddle, drenching his feet and
ankles and splashing his best clothes with dirty water. Oblivious of
such trivial happenings, dreaming of the future, counting the evenings
to Saturday night, he reached his home, where, lying down to sleep, the
lady of his heart followed him in his dreams.

Hertha, as she washed the cups and tidied up the kitchen, was happy,
too, for a time, recollecting with pleasurable excitement the look of
admiration in her visitor's eyes. But shortly her cheeks grew hot with
anger at him and at herself. He had insulted the colored people, "her
people," as she had so recently called them, and she had said no word of
protest. If she could not talk, she argued to herself, she could refuse
to see this young man again. It was men like this who stole the Negro's
crops, who kept their children in ignorance, who even broke down jail
doors and lynched black prisoners. Why had she ever allowed herself to
be kind to such a man? Then as she looked about her, as she seemed to
see Dick in the chair by the table, she smiled a little. Probably it was
foolish to get so excited on the matter. Mammy's last instructions were
not to try to stand in two worlds, and if the white world showed more
indifference, more antagonism to the black than even she had expected,
she was in it and it was as well to know it as it was. In her loneliness
she taught herself to believe that she had a right to become acquainted
with this southern youth, but she resolved firmly not to let him have
the conversation all to himself if he should again broach the Negro
question. However bashful she might be, it should be possible for her to
utter some forceful word.

CHAPTER XXI

With the coming of February, speeding did not stop at the "Imperial,"
while overtime crept in. Owing to rush orders the girls found themselves
working half an hour or even an hour over the usual time to close. The