you're not one
of them. Because Miss Patty is white is no reason that she should have a
maid who has a better education and knows more than she does."

"Aren't you drawing on your imagination?"

"No, I'm telling the exact truth. Miss Patty is getting something she
has no right to, and you're not getting your birthright, to be yourself,
to develop the highest in you."

"What great talent have I neglected?"

Ellen threw her arm over her sister's shoulder. "You have talent,
Hertha, you know you have, only you won't recognize it, but keep dancing
attendance on that old lady. With a little instruction you would be a
skillful dressmaker, an _artiste_, as the advertisements say. You sew
beautifully and have lots of taste, and you've style. With such a gift
in any large city you could surely get ahead. You could have custom,
too, if you wanted, from our people."

"I don't expect to get ahead."

"But why?"

"I don't know." The girl stopped a moment and then said slowly, "I don't
believe I've as much ambition as you. I don't like study. I hate the
city, and I'm contented and happy here. When work is over I've you and
mother to go to; I belong to you two and I don't want to leave you."

Her face was aflame as she said this, realizing that it was only a
partial truth. Her deception made her angry, and she turned in retort
upon her sister. "Why does it worry you so that I should love Miss
Patty? Are you jealous?"

"You know as well as I do that it isn't that."

"It sounds like that to me. I like my work. Why should I accept a lot of
responsibility, set up a shop, which I should hate, or go about making
cheap gowns for stout black people when I can stay at home and wait on a
sweet, refined person like my mistress?"

The "my mistress" was given with an emphasis that closed the subject.
Ellen had said that her sister was not a child like Tom, and for the
time at least she must accept the verdict against her.

"Well, chillen," their mother said as they came up to the cabin, "de
best o' news, a letter f'om Tom!"

They both were upon her, but Hertha got the letter.

"Mister Lee were walkin' dis-a-way an' bring it ter me. It were kind o'
him; he knowed I wan' ter see it mighty quick."

"How short!" Hertha said, reading it through rapidly.

Mammy was at once up in arms for her son. "What done you 'spec'? Dar's
de paper civered. He tells 'bout de journey, an' what he gits fer his
meals, an' how big de ocean look, an' how