arm gently in a caress. "It has to be good-by, Sister,"
he went on, "the white world don't meet the colored world to-day. Look
at this church here. It's close to white folks' homes but no one ever
thinks to come in to worship. I've sat here and thought of it many
times. We ain't really men and women to them. I reckon they don't think
we're children of God."

"That's it," Hertha cried, "and how could I live with any one who
thought that?"

"They all think it," Tom answered.

"No, they don't," said Hertha angrily; "my teachers didn't at school."

"They were women," Tom replied. "Women have more religion than men."

He rose from his seat and stretched himself, his long arms extended, his
short coat-sleeves revealing a great expanse of wrist and hand.

"What are you growing so tall for?" Hertha asked, looking up at him.

"I reckon I have to." He dropped his arms to his sides. "It's a mistake
fer it takes a lot of coat and pants to cover me, and in the bed the
sheet don't come up high enough and the blanket's forever slipping by on
the floor."

"Oh, you'll get sick," his former sister and nurse cried, looking so
troubled that Tom had to laugh.

"Don't you worry," he answered, smiling down at her, "I've had such a
good bringing up that I can't go wrong now, not anyways."

Nothing that he could have said would have meant so much. She accepted
his words in their fullest meaning and felt uplifted, comforted.
Whatever she might make of her own life, she had helped wisely to mold
his. If she never saw him again she would know that her influence would
stay with him to the end, blossoming in honorable thoughts and kindly
deeds.

"And so you advise me to marry?" she said, rising too and trying to
speak with a laugh.

"No, ma'am!" with decision. "I ain't advising you to marry. I's just
advising you not to give up marrying."

"Well," with a little shrug, "it amounts to the same thing."

"What you got to hurry for?" Tom returned to his old charge.

"If I don't decide I can't stay where I am. There is Miss Wood one
evening telling me to go on with my work--she loathes Dick--and Mrs.
Pickens the next telling me to accept a good husband. That's what it's
like when Dick's away, and it's a million times harder when he's around.
I'll move if I give him up.

"I met an old man this winter," she went on, "a friend of Kathleen's. He
had a terrible philosophy, everything was going to the dogs. You'd have
thought that the world