to these new people
of her past was becoming unthinkable. The man she meant to marry should
know of it, but she pushed all thought of marriage from her life.

Dick's words, however, rankled daily, and while it was a futile pursuit,
destined in no way to help to install the Negro in his rightful place in
Mrs. Pickens' household, she spent many hours picturing the Georgia
boy's childhood and contrasting it unfavorably with her own. He had told
her something of his home, she had seen one of his mother's letters, and
she made what was in reality a fairly shrewd guess at his former
surroundings. When a little girl she had lived near a white family that
counted itself of importance, but whose standards she despised. These
people occupied a long, low house, devoid of paint or whitewash, with
broken steps from which the railing was long since absent. The rooms of
the house opened upon a porch and near the steps was a table with a
pitcher and bowl. It was the washroom of the home, and at noon
especially it was amusing to watch the men come up and with much
spluttering pour water over their faces and run their wet hands through
their hair. Ablutions were performed here day and night. The rear of the
house was ill-kept and dirty, and once, when Tom brought home a bright
piece of rug, thrown out on the dust heap, Mammy rebuked him sharply and
burned the offending rag in the stove. The men of the house had been
rough and unmannerly and the ugly, sallow women had dipped snuff and
looked like slatterns. Probably Dick's sisters (he had told her he had
two older sisters) were sallow, with straight thin hair and shrill
voices. If they did not dip snuff, they certainly chewed gum, a practice
in which Dick himself indulged. "Cheap white trash, dirty white trash,"
this would be the best word her mammy could say for such people, except
perhaps after a good meal or an uplifting sermon when she would admit
that they "hadn't had advantages."

And yet it was the memory of her colored mother and not the word of
apology from Dick or of excuse from Mrs. Pickens that brought Hertha to
the car that Monday morning. Ellen, she felt sure, would have rejoiced
at her retort, thrilling with pleasure at it, but Mammy would have been
grieved. "Don' make yoursel' cheap, chile," she had once said in rebuke
to Ellen, after her daughter had broken out in fierce and angry attack
upon a stupid father whom she could not persuade to do his duty by his
children. "Ke