Dora laughed and said, as she rose from her seat: “I think I am forgetting my errand.” And making an elaborate bow, she continued: “If it please your royal highness, I present to you the compliments of the occupants of No. 500 D Street, with the request that you will honor us on Sunday evening, at half after seven, in the parlor of the worthy landlady of said house, where an informal reception will be held to further the better acquaintance of Miss Sappho Clark with her fellow-occupants of said house. Music during the evening. Refreshments at nine sharp; after which, you are all expected to retire to your rooms like virtuous citizens.”
“I herewith most gratefully accept your kind invitation,” replied Sappho, with a deep courtesy.
“Ta, ta, then, until Sunday night. I shan’t see you before that. I shall be lost for the remainder of the week ‘getting ready for company’ ”; and Dora, with a gay laugh, ran lightly down the stairs.
Mrs. Smith, after many trials, found that her house contained respectable though unlettered people, who possessed kindly hearts and honesty of purpose in a greater degree than one generally finds in a lodging-house. Her great desire, then, was to make them as happy together as possible, and to this end she had Dora institute musical evenings or reception nights, that her tenants might have a better opportunity of becoming acquainted with each other. She argued, logically enough, that those who were inclined to stray from right paths would be influenced either in favor of upright conduct or else shamed into an acceptance of the right. It soon became noised about that very pleasant times were enjoyed in that house; and that a sick lodger had been nursed back to health, instead of being hustled into the hospital ambulance at the first sign of sickness. It was also whispered that to enjoy these privileges one must be “pretty nice,” or as some expressed it: “You’ve got to be high-toned to get in there.” The result, however, justified Mrs. Smith’s judgment, and rooms were always hard to get at No. 500 D Street.
Saturday was a busy day for Dora and her mother. At these little gatherings Mrs. Smith always gave her guests plenty of good homemade cake, sandwiches, hot chocolate, and on very special occasions, ice cream or sherbet. Sunday night there was to be ice cream in honor of the new lodger. “Good things to eat,” said Ma Smith, as she industriously beat eggs, sugar and butter together in a large yellow bowl, “good things to eat make a man respect himself and look up in the world. You can’t feel that you are nobody all the time if once in a while you eat the same quality of food that a millionaire does.”
Dora lighted the lamps all over the house on Sunday night as soon as it fell dark. In the parlor there was a handsome piano lamp, which was only used on special occasions; it was lighted, and threw a soft, warm glow over the neat woolen carpet, the modest furniture and few ornaments. In a corner stood Dora’s piano, given her on her sixteenth birthday by her brother. Very soon after seven o’clock the guests began to drop in; and as Dora and her mother were busy still over a few last preparations, Will and John volunteered to act as the reception committee.
The first comers were the two occupants of the basement rooms—those which would have answered for the dining-room and kitchen of a moderately well-to-do family living in this class of house. Mrs. Ophelia Davis and Mrs. Sarah Ann White were friends of long standing. They were both born in faraway Louisiana, had been raised on neighboring plantations, and together had sought the blessings of liberty in the North at the close of the war. Mrs. Davis had always been a first-class cook, while Mrs. White tempted fortune as a second-girl. As their ideas of life and living enlarged, and they saw the possibilities of enjoying some comfort in a home, they began to think of establishing themselves where they could realize this blessing, and finally hit upon the idea of going into partnership in a laundry. After looking about them fora suitable situation for such a project, their choice finally fell upon Mrs. Smith’s house, because of her known respectability, and because they could there come in contact with brighter intellects than their own; for, strange to say, it is a very hopeless case when a colored man or woman does not respect intelligence and good position.
“Yas, Sis’r Smith,” said Mrs. Ophelia Davis the day she and Sarah Ann White went to engage the rooms; “yas’m, I’m tired o’ livin’ in white folkses’ kitchens. Yas’m, thar’s lots o’ talk ’bout servant gals not bein’ as good as enybody else, specially cooks. Yas’m, I kin git my five dollars a week with enyone; but ef you puts on a decent dress to go to church with a-Sunday afternoon, the mistis is a-wonderin’ how you kin ’ford sech style and you nuthin’ but a cook in her kitchen. Yas’m, I’ve got a silk dress, two of ’em, an’ a lace shawl an’ a gold watch and chain. People wants ter know how’d I git ’em. I come by ’em hones’, I did. Yas’m, when my ol’ mistis left her great big house an’ all that good stuff—silver an’ things—a-layin’ thar fer enyone to pick up thet had sense ’nough to know a good thing an’ git it ahead of enybody else, I jes’ said to myself: ‘ ’Phelia, chile, now’s yer time!’ Yas’m, I feathered my nes’, I jes’ did. Sarah Ann, you ’member that time, honey, an’ how skeered we was fer fear some o’ them Union sojers would ketch us. You stuffed yerself with
