None of these forebodings visited the mind of Kit, and as soon as her mother appeared on the threshold she ran to her, crying, “Oh, where are we going to live, ma?”
Fannie looked at her for a moment, and then answered with a burst of tears, “Gawd knows, child, Gawd knows.”
The girl stepped back astonished. “Why, why!” and then with a rush of tenderness she threw her arms about her mother’s neck. “Oh, you’re tired to death,” she said; “that’s what’s the matter with you. Never mind about the house now. I’ve got some tea made for you, and you just take a cup.”
Fannie sat down and tried to drink her tea, but she could not. It stuck in her throat, and the tears rolled down her face and fell into the shaking cup. Joe looked on silently. He had been out and he understood.
“I’ll go out tomorrow and do some looking around for a house while you stay at home an’ rest, ma.”
Her mother looked up, the maternal instinct for the protection of her daughter at once aroused. “Oh, no, not you, Kitty,” she said.
Then for the first time Joe spoke: “You’d just as well tell Kitty now, ma, for she’s got to come across it anyhow.”
“What you know about it? Whaih you been to?”
“I’ve been out huntin’ work. I’ve been to Jones’s bahbah shop an’ to the Continental Hotel.” His light-brown face turned brick red with anger and shame at the memory of it. “I don’t think I’ll try any more.”
Kitty was gazing with wide and saddening eyes at her mother.
“Were they mean to you too, ma?” she asked breathlessly.
“Mean? Oh Kitty! Kitty! you don’t know what it was like. It nigh killed me. Thaih was plenty of houses an’ owned by people I’ve knowed fu’ yeahs, but not one of ’em wanted to rent to me. Some of ’em made excuses ’bout one thing er t’other, but de res’ come right straight out an’ said dat we’d give a neighbourhood a bad name ef we moved into it. I’ve almos’ tramped my laigs off. I’ve tried every decent place I could think of, but nobody wants us.”
The girl was standing with her hands clenched nervously before her. It was almost more than she could understand.
“Why, we ain’t done anything,” she said. “Even if they don’t know any better than to believe that pa was guilty, they know we ain’t done anything.”
“I’d like to cut the heart out of a few of ’em,” said Joe in his throat.
“It ain’t goin’ to do no good to look at it thataway, Joe,” his mother replied. “I know hit’s ha’d, but we got to do de bes’ we kin.”
“What are we goin’ to do?” cried the boy fiercely. “They won’t let us work. They won’t let us live anywhaih. Do they want us to live on the levee an’ steal, like some of ’em do?”
“What are we goin’ to do?” echoed Kitty helplessly. “I’d go out ef I thought I could find anythin’ to work at.”
“Don’t you go anywhaih, child. It ’ud only be worse. De niggah men dat ust to be bowin’ an’ scrapin’ to me an’ tekin’ off dey hats to me laughed in my face. I met Minty—an’ she slurred me right in de street. Dey’d do worse fu’ you.”
In the midst of the conversation a knock came at the door. It was a messenger from the “House,” as they still called Oakley’s home, and he wanted them to be out of the cottage by the next afternoon, as the new servants were coming and would want the rooms.
The message was so curt, so hard and decisive, that Fannie was startled out of her grief into immediate action.
“Well, we got to go,” she said, rising wearily.
“But where are we goin’?” wailed Kitty in affright. “There’s no place to go to. We haven’t got a house. Where’ll we go?”
“Out o’ town someplace as fur away from this damned hole as we kin git.” The boy spoke recklessly in his anger. He had never sworn before his mother before.
She looked at him in horror. “Joe, Joe,” she said, “you’re mekin’ it wuss. You’re mekin’ it ha’dah fu’ me to baih when you talk dataway. What you mean? Whaih you think Gawd is?”
Joe remained sullenly silent. His mother’s faith was too stalwart for his comprehension. There was nothing like it in his own soul to interpret it.
“We’ll git de secon’-han’ dealah to tek ouah things tomorrer, an’ then we’ll go away some place, up No’th maybe.”
“Let’s go to New York,” said Joe.
“New Yo’k?”
They had heard of New York as a place vague and far away, a city that, like Heaven, to them had existed by faith alone. All the days of their lives they had heard of it, and it seemed to them the centre of all the glory, all the wealth, and all the freedom of the world. New York. It had an alluring sound. Who would know them there? Who would look down upon them?
“It’s a mighty long ways off fu’ me to be sta’tin’ at dis time o’ life.”
“We want to go a long ways off.”
“I wonder what pa would think of it if he was here,” put in Kitty.
“I guess he’d think we was doin’ the best we could.”
“Well, den, Joe,” said his mother, her voice trembling with emotion at the daring step they were about to take, “you set down an’ write a lettah to yo’ pa, an’ tell him what we goin’ to do, an’ tomorrer—tomorrer—we’ll sta’t.”
Something akin to joy came into the boy’s heart as he sat down to write the letter. They had taunted him, had they? They had scoffed at him. But he was going where they might never go, and someday he would come back holding his head high and pay them sneer for sneer and jibe for jibe.
The same night the commission was given to the furniture dealer who would
