Sunday Ellen proposed to her sister that they take a walk, and they went among the pines and dark cypresses, through the swamp, and by the black creek. It was hot and humid, the mosquitoes were annoying, and they were both tired when they returned to the cabin steps.
"I don't like this time of year," Hertha said when they sat down. "It's so silent. The birds ceased singing long ago; they only call to one another now."
"The mosquitoes haven't ceased singing, I notice," Ellen replied, laughing. "Now I like this time of year best of all. October means the beginning of cool weather and work."
When Hertha went to her room that night a little breeze greeted her as she sat down by her window. It was cloudy at first, but in a few moments the clouds broke and the moonlight streamed upon the dark trees and the white sand. She watched the moon sailing through the clouds, she smelt the roses by the porch, and the wall that her will had built against her sweet and rapturous thoughts broke down, and with a rush her spirit was swept with tumultuous love.
"Cinderella," Lee said to her the next morning as she turned into the orange grove, "you've been a shockingly long time coming."
"I know it," she answered, "but there were so many things to think of, sitting by the fire."
"Don't think," he urged. "I've given it up. Don't think, but live."
And this time she lifted up her face and, without a thought, gave him a kiss.
CHAPTER V
"Hertha," Ellen said the next afternoon, "have you any plans for the future?"
School had just closed, Miss Patty had given her maid an afternoon off, and the two sisters were walking together toward their home.
"Any plans?" Hertha was startled. "I thought our plans were made for good when we came here."
"I hope not!" Ellen declared decidedly. "I'm willing to work here now for next to nothing, but I shall try for a bigger job some day; and you, honey, you don't always want to be Miss Patty's maid."
"I don't know; why shouldn't I?"
"This is a dull life for you, Hertha. Sometimes I think we ought never to have come here."
"Ellen!"
"It's different for mammy and me; we're older."
"You're only four years older than I."
"I think that really I'm a great deal older than you. But I get so much more out of Merryvale than you do. The people who live in these cabins—well, they're problems to me, human problems that I'm trying to solve. There's hardly a home that hasn't in it some boy or girl whom I'm watching almost as though he were my child. I'm working for the children, Hertha, the colored children who will soon be men and women and who ought to have just as good a chance as white children in this world."
"They never will in America."
"I'm not so sure," Ellen answered.
They were walking in the pine region back of the river. To a newcomer many of the cabins would have looked untidy; the ubiquitous hog would have been pronounced a public nuisance, and the facilities for washing inadequate; but to Ellen the settlement in which she had been working for five years was a garden of progress, and if a few of the plants made a determined stand to remain weeds, she did not let them hide her numerous hardy flowers. In her heart she meant ultimately to uproot them. Old Mr. Merryvale would never stand for severity, but the next generation was at work upon the place and might be induced to aid her in exiling the degenerate few.
"I love it here!" Ellen exclaimed, stopping and looking about her. "I never worked in a school before where it was so easy to get at the people, or where the children seemed so anxious to learn. Do you know, I suppose no one would believe me if they heard it, but I'm glad that I'm colored."
"Why not?" Hertha asked sharply. "If you love your work and these people, why should you want to be white?"
"You know that's a foolish question," and Ellen looked sadly at her sister. "You know as well, better than I, the handicap of color. Haven't I seen you have to bear it? But still it's great to belong to a rising race, not to one that's on top and likely to fall."
"To fall? How silly."
"Is it? Well, perhaps it's improbable. But, anyway, that isn't what I started to talk about. I didn't mean to talk of myself, but of you. I'm afraid this isn't the right place for you."
"I love it here, too!" Hertha cried, showing more animation than was usual with her. "I like the country; you know I do. Why, I love everything about the place, all the flowers in our yard, the pigs, the chickens, the pines. I think it's the most beautiful spot in the world, and so does Tom."
She drew in a long breath and threw out her arms as though to take in the whole of Merryvale.
"That's all right, but you can't live just on flowers and views; you need people."
Hertha made no response, and they walked on for a time in silence.
"It's like this," Ellen continued. "You're a generation ahead of these cabins, and you don't enjoy the people socially who live in them. It isn't snobbish to say this; it's just true. You haven't a single friend here. I can't think what it would mean if you went away. It would be like losing the color out of the sky; everything would be dull gray. But if you ought to go, you ought, and I should help you."
"Haven't you made unhappiness enough, Ellen, with your plans, making Tom go, but you must get rid of me too?"
"That isn't fair."
"That's what it seems like."
"Let's talk reasonably. Of course it isn't the same with you as with Tom; you're not a child."
"I'm glad you realize that."
"Why, Hertha, you're almost cross. Please let me explain what I mean. I'm glad you like it here, but we all have to look ahead, and I can't look ahead and see you a servant in a white man's home."
"Why not?"
"You're too refined, too delicate. You ought to enter the front door, and if you can't enter there, isn't it better not to enter at all?"
There was no answer.
"I know I've talked this way before, and I'll try not to do so again, but I want to make myself quite clear. It isn't as though I didn't believe in colored girls going into domestic service; I do. There are lots of people who belong at the back door, and it would be silly to deny it and to put them at work beyond their ability; but 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
