Hazel

It was necessary to stay in Montgomery over night in order to make railroad connections; so Hazel was able to visit Mr. and Mrs. Jenks again, while Miss Davis went to a hotel. Mrs. Jenks and her husband were delighted at the change in Hazel’s appearance. The thin, shy child had grown almost plump and was full of spirits. She talked gaily at dinner, she romped with the children, and she gave her host such a generous good-night hug that he was breathless and disheveled when it was over.

“Excuse me,” Hazel called as she ran upstairs, “but that is the way Mr. Perkins likes me to say good-night to him. And, oh,” ecstatically, “I shall see him next Sunday!”

The following morning Mrs. Jenks put up an enormous box of luncheons and breakfasts and suppers for Hazel. Such a quantity of bread and butter sandwiches, such a lot of sliced chicken and hard-boiled eggs, and a jar of guava jelly with a spoon that didn’t have to be returned.

“It will be less expensive for you than to get your meals on the train,” Mrs. Jenks began hesitatingly.

Hazel broke in impetuously, “I know all about it, Mrs. Jenks. I’m not wanted in the dining car because I’m colored. I’m traveling North as Miss Davis’s maid, and I’m to do little things for her and to play I really am a maid. She says her traveling dress hooks up the back and around the side with about a hundred hooks, and that she could never wear it except for me. And I must keep her hair smooth for her because her mother says it is always untidy—it isn’t, it’s beautiful. And I’m to fan the flies away from her when she takes a nap. As if I thought flies were on trains! But we are going to play that I am her maid, to make a game of it, because it is better to do that than to keep feeling angry. How many meals do I eat? One, two, three, four, five? This is plenty, for I can get milk and cocoa. I’m going to sleep in an upper berth, think, and climb up on a ladder! It will be great fun.”

Mrs. Jenks smiled and sighed and put some cakes in the box.

Miss Davis called for Hazel in a carriage, and the little girl felt very proud as she drove away with her new friend. The station was an exciting place. Hazel saw a check marked “Boston” put on her trunk and knew that home was near. She entered the Pullman car with Miss Davis and held her hand tightly as the porter showed them their seats. All her safety from insult, she knew, lay in the presence of her white companion. They sat down together and at length the train drew out of the station, headed for the North and home.

The little girl looked up at her friend. “I’m trying to think all the time of Mother,” she said, “but I can’t forget Granny and Scip.”

“You’ll visit them again,” Miss Davis said consolingly. “When people once begin to travel they never stop.”

The journey was full of interest to Hazel, and not an unkind word was said to her during the trip. Indeed, an old lady in the seat across the aisle took a fancy to her, and sent her a big plate of ice-cream from the dining car. “Two portions, I’m sure,” Miss Davis said when she heard about it. New York was reached, a din of trolleys and elevateds and a big, beautiful station with a restaurant where everyone could sit and eat, and then Boston and home.

It was night when they got off the train at the South Station, and Hazel trembled as she walked by Miss Davis’s side. If Mother should miss her! Then she saw a big black man and she rushed toward and past him and into her mother’s arms.

“I waited a long time for my greeting,” said Mr. Perkins, smoothing his coat collar, “but it was satisfactory when I got it.”

“Where is Miss Davis?” asked Hazel when she could look about her again.

“She left her good-bye,” said Mr. Perkins; “she was hurrying to meet someone, too; perhaps it was her brother, and perhaps it wasn’t. Come, Little Frog, give me your check. I’ll look after your trunk when I’ve put you and your mother on the car. You’re coming to dine with us Sunday.”

How beautiful home looked with its three dear little rooms! The table was set for supper. There was a big dish of strawberries, white bread and butter, and a spider on the fire with a lamb chop in it ready to cook! In a moment Charity came in.

The two little girls flew into one another’s arms.

“My, ain’t you fat, Hazel!” said Charity.

Hazel laughed delightedly. “I like to be fat,” she said.

“I am going to cook your chop,” said Charity, and Mrs. Tyler let her.

“Mother,” said Hazel as she ate her supper, “you don’t know, for you haven’t been South, how good this chop tastes. There are two things I don’t want to see again for a long time; one is bacon and the other is corn bread.” Then, feeling that this might seem ungrateful to Granny, “they are both good, but I’ve had enough of them.”

“There’s a moving-picture show around the corner,” said Charity, when Hazel had finished her supper, “want to go? I’ve got two dimes.”

“Oh, not to-night, Charity.”

“Well, whenever you want, the price is on me.”

Hazel was not allowed to help with the dishes, for she was a visitor this evening. To-morrow she would slip back into the routine of home. She and her mother talked and talked far into the night, there was so much to tell about, and both were so happy. At length Hazel dropped off to sleep, but her mother lay awake until the dawn showed her her child’s face again. “How well she looks,” Mrs. Tyler said again and again to herself. “I did right to send her away.”

“Here is a wash-cloth that I spun and wove for you, Charity,” Hazel said the next morning and handed it triumphantly to her friend.

Charity looked it over carefully. “I can buy ’em like that for five cents at Jordan, Marsh’s.”

“Can you?” answered Hazel, trying not to be hurt. “And it took me days and days to make it.”

“Sure,” said Charity loftily, “didn’t I tell you it was slow down South?”

When Hazel took the same gift to her school-teacher, however, she heard a very different comment.

“You’ve done a wonderful thing, Hazel,” Miss Grey said. “You’ve followed an industry from its beginning to the finished product. Next year, if it is possible, we will get a spinning-wheel and loom and you can demonstrate the spinning and weaving to the school.”

Hazel repeated this to Charity.

“Bet you’d break your thread,” Charity declared, “when you had to spin before all the boys and girls.”

The homecoming was very exciting. There was the first Sunday at church, and the Sunday school service, when they wanted to hear about their song-books down in Alabama, and the good time at the Perkins’s and the trolley rides with Charity. Mr. Perkins gave Hazel a dollar for trolley rides, telling her that she must not forget the city and its delights.

June came, and one late afternoon Mrs. Tyler returned from her work looking so happy that Hazel accused her of having a secret.

Mrs. Tyler nodded assent. “You shall hear it after supper,” she said.

So when the dishes were washed they sat down together, and Hazel heard the secret.

“We are going away for the summer,” said her mother. “I find I can make more money at my shampooing in the country than here. Some of my customers go to a beautiful place by the sea and they promise me plenty of business there.”

“Is it at Revere Beach?” asked Hazel.

“No indeed, goosey, much further than that, ’way down in Maine.”

“More traveling?”

“Yes, more traveling, but not so far as Alabama.”

“I shall miss Charity,” mused Hazel, “but I believe wherever you go you have to miss somebody. Are there pines in Maine?”

“Pines?”

“Yes, pine trees. Do they grow there?”

“I think so, dear.”

“Then, if there are pine trees, I shall like it very much!”

Just before they left town letters came from Granny and Scip.

“Mother,” said Hazel after reading them, “my heart is content. Scipio is living with Granny; at least, he is staying there at night. She never did like living alone, the least bit, and so she got Scip’s father to let the boy stay with her. She gives him supper and breakfast and Granny says he was half starved before, and at night they both read out of the books I left. Granny says they think of me.”

Scipio’s letter was plainly printed and showed constant consultation with the dictionary.

“I’m so glad you trimmed my summer hat with the feathers Scip gave me, Mother,” Hazel said, “I shall tell him about it the next time I write.”

THE END.