It was the bell of the outer door, and Hertha went to the kitchen to push the button that released the latch. Who could be coming to see Kathleen, she thought, on such a wretched night? Of course, some one who needed her services as nurse; and, going into the hall, she opened the outer door of the flat the better to guide the stranger upstairs.

"May I come in?"

It was a very wet figure that stood before her clasping a hat in one hand and in the other a large cotton umbrella that dripped puddles of water upon the floor. The question was asked in a jovial tone, and yet the man's attitude betrayed something like timidity.

"Certainly," Hertha answered. "Give me your umbrella; it's very wet."

"No, tell me where to put it; you mustn't get any of this rain on you," and Richard Shelby Brown followed Hertha as she led the way into the kitchen.

Together they put the umbrella into the washtub where it could drip harmlessly, and then, divested of his coat and hat, the young man went with his hostess into the front room where she insisted that he sit close to the radiator to get dry.

When she had seated him to her satisfaction and was back in her chair by the table there was silence. Now that Dick Brown's bodily wants were cared for, Hertha began to question herself how he had ever gotten there, and to wonder whether she should not be angry with him for following her uninvited to her home. But she was too homesick, too much in need of companionship, not to feel a little pleasure in seeing him, his long legs tucked under his straight chair, his thin face making a grotesque silhouette against the window shade. He was certainly homely and a pusher, just an ordinary "hill billy," as he had described himself. She decided that since he had come uninvited he must begin the conversation.

Dick Brown, as though appreciating his position, opened his mouth to speak and then sneezed—not once, but a number of times.

"You've taken a cold already," Hertha said sympathetically. "You shouldn't have come out to-night."

"No, I haven't, indeed I haven't. I'm just getting over one."

"How long have you had it?"

"About a month."

"I believe you got it that morning in the park. You shouldn't have given me your overcoat."

"That had nothing to do with it!" Brown spoke with a kindly bluster. "Nothing to do with it. Don't you think that for a minute. You see, after you left, I got playing with the kids and they squeezed snow down my neck and I lambasted them and we had a grand lark. It was mighty fine, but I learned that snow melts and then——"

He sneezed again.

"It was too bad," Hertha exclaimed. "It's so hard to be ill away from home."

"I reckon it is! Your meals set down by the side of your bed, the gruel cold and full of lumps, no one to growl at when your head aches and you can't go to sleep! It's a mighty poor state of things."

"I'm afraid you were pretty sick."

"Just missed pneumonia."

"You ought not to have come out to-night." Hertha spoke with emphasis.

"Oh, I'm all hunky now. I've sat in the library most every night since they let me out. Wouldn't they grin at home if they saw me fooling this way with books! Why, I know more news out of the magazines this month than all of Casper County ever knew since the first moonshiner set up his still! I'm reeking with information. But I bet you're reading one of those three-volume novels they tell about that last a year. I couldn't wait any longer, so I came to headquarters."

"How did you get my address?" Hertha had not meant to ask the question, but it slipped out unawares.

"Don't make me explain, please. It's against all the rules and regulations and the librarian only told because at times I'm a beautiful liar."

His thin face, looking thinner than ever from his sickness, wore a worried expression, and one of his long hands moved nervously against his side. At home he was accounted a confident youth who could grab up a girl and swing away with her a little faster than the next man, but here in New York he was off his ground. Moreover, this very pretty young woman with her aristocratic ways gave him no help, but sat quite silent as though questioning what right he had in her home. Awkwardly he rose and played his last card.

"I've a letter I want you to see," he said, "it's from my mother. I wrote and told her about you and how I hoped we'd get acquainted, only New York's such a big place a girl has to be careful. It ain't much like our country towns in Dixie, is it? Anyway, she wrote in answer, and here's the letter. You can read it, postmark and all. Seems like it was written for you."

He handed the letter to her with an attempt at self-confidence; but she took it with so serious a face that, saying nothing further, he stood, almost humbly, awaiting her decision.

Hertha read the letter through. It was badly written and showed more than one lapse in spelling. Two pages were filled with admonitions to keep sober and serve the Lord; the third contained bits of local news: Cousin Sally Lou's visit, the number of partridges Uncle Barton had brought in for dinner. But on the last was the message that was doubtless meant for Hertha's eyes. "The young lady, from all you say, must be mighty grand, but she needn't be afraid of you. You weren't one to hang round the station every evening, or to steal out nights with the fellows to get whisky. You've been a good son, Dick, and every mother can't say that. Look at Jim Slade's mother, now——" and the letter ended with an account of Jim's latest escapade.

Hertha handed it back with a pleasant smile. "It reads just like the South, doesn't it?" she said cordially. "Down there we know every little happening, while in New York you have to tell a story to learn where I live."

The young man laughed noisily; his relief was great.

"You're right, all right," he said, sitting nearer her. "It's like one big family down there, and if a visitor drops in there ain't a person in town from the Baptist preacher to the poorest nigger who won't have the news. Are you a Baptist, Miss Hertha?"

"No, I'm an Episcopalian."

"Whew! We only know 'em by name our way. It's Baptist or Methodist with us, with once in a while a Christian place of worship. Ever seen a revival now?"

"Yes."

"Have you? I wouldn't have supposed that an Episcopalian would so much as go to one. But it's a wonderful sight, don't you think, when the sinners come to the penitent seat? I've seen 'em, big men, crying like babies. And then the preacher with his great voice calling 'em to repent and showing 'em the way to righteousness. And out from somewhere a woman'll start a song, perhaps 'Rock of Ages,' and the whole room'll be full of the sound of the hymn."

He grew eloquent as he spoke, picturing the scene he knew so well. In his narrow life the church and its emotional appeal had occupied an important place. He wanted to tell her that he had been among that group kneeling in repentance, that he was a sinner saved by grace; but there was an aloofness about her that kept him from going further. He could not guess that she had wholly forgotten him, and was sitting in a bare room where the dim lamp lighted a multitude of black faces; where the cries of "Amen" rang from the penitent seat, and where the black preacher, the only father she had ever known, called upon the Lord to give to His children mercy and forgiveness. Her visitor had never listened to such a revival as she!

There was a long silence. Then Richard Brown strove again to make conversation.

"The niggers, now, they're a worthless lot, don't you think?"

Hertha started nervously. "I don't think so," she said.

"Don't you? I suppose you've had 'em in your family for a long time—old mammies and uncles. They don't grow that kind round our way, only a lot of worthless coons that won't do a lick of work unless they're driven to it."

"There's the funniest nigger minstrel show at the Hippodrome," he went on, "you ought to see it. Greatest thing out. There ain't anything much funnier, anyway, than to see a black buck dressed in a high hat and a pair of fancy shoes, opening his frog mouth and singing a coon song. Mighty funny songs they've got there, too. Wish you could hear one of them."

He wanted to ask her to go to the show with him the next week, but she looked further removed from him than ever. Had he said anything to warrant it he would have thought that she was angry; but that could hardly be the case. She just wasn't his kind and he had better accept the fact and go home. But as he sat crossing and recrossing his knees, wishing inexpressibly for the relief of a smoke, her face in the lamplight was so lovely that he shut his teeth and resolved to hang on.

Then a sneeze came to his relief, a big-throated sneeze, followed by a second and a third.

"Oh," Hertha cried, rousing herself, "aren't you warm enough? Perhaps it's warmer in the kitchen."

"Don't bother."

"It isn't any bother. I often sit there."

He followed her into the bright little kitchen, hoping that in a new environment he might be able to break through her reticence; but Hertha herself helped him.

"I'm going to make you a cup of cocoa," she said. "You're cold and you need something to warm you up."

Beyond allowing him to light the gas stove, she refused all assistance, and as he stood watching her go through her deft movements, measuring, stirring, and at last pouring a foaming liquid into their two cups—for to his delight she was to share the meal—he was more attracted and yet more puzzled than ever.

"You cook mighty well," he said as she poured the hot cocoa.

"I'm used to doing little things about the house," she answered. "Before I came here I was a companion in a family."

The statement was made on the spur of the moment, but as Hertha thought it over she was delighted that she had been able to say something that opened up a way to live in the past without embarrassment, almost without falsehood. To conjure up the world of white people in her grandfather's home had been beyond her power; even in her thoughts she had stumbled in her endeavor to climb the ladder that led to their eminence. But as a companion in the Merryvale household she was in familiar surroundings.

Richard Brown on his part was a little disappointed. He had been dreaming of a princess in disguise and he found only a poor relation. In the large families of the South there were sometimes girls like this, though when they were so pretty they usually soon married, girls who had to do the odd tasks, give up the good times, go to live with some distant cousin or aunt as the case might be. That sort of thing made a girl shy and quiet. For the first time that evening he felt at ease.

"I bet there ain't anybody in New York can make cocoa to beat yours,", he declared emphatically. "I never liked the stuff before."

"I should have made you coffee," Hertha said regretfully. "I forgot, because coffee keeps me awake."

"Does me, too." He was ready to agree with anything. "Now, down home, tramping through the woods, I could drink a dozen cups a day. But it's different in the city."

"Were your woods pines?" she asked, "and were there streams with cypresses by the banks?"

Here at last they had found a meeting place, a common ground. If she would not play or laugh with him, they could wander through the woods together, tasting the tang of the evergreen or watching the buds burst on the wild plum. Drawing his chair a little forward, he hugged his knee and sang the song of the country of his birth.

Outside the rain splashed upon the street, making great puddles at the crossings, the wind blew fiercely down the narrow roadways and shook the windows in their frames; but within the little tenement the southern boy moved without a cloud to shadow him through the playtime of his years. Sometimes it was winter and he was among the hills trapping birds and shooting rabbits. Again it was early spring and with rod in hand he trailed the brown stream until the trout rose and brought him all attention to the game they played that through his skill ended in death and victory. Or it was summer and too hot to walk, but glorious to gallop in the early morning over the rough road and down the hollow to where the brook broadened into a swimming-pool that called him to bathe in its reviving water. Again he moved among the woods in autumn, hunting, but not too intent upon his game to fail to find the nuts scattered upon his path or to stop and, putting his hand in a hole of a decaying tree, bring out a blinking, monkey-faced owl.

"Why, it's half past ten," he cried, looking at the clock on the shelf above the stove. "I must go, for we both have to work to-morrow."

He ventured this at a hazard, but she did not contradict him.

"Your coat is quite dry," she answered, feeling it as she came to take it from the hook where it hung.

They stood in the narrow hallway and as he swung the coat upon his high shoulders he was a little awkward and brushed against her arm. She laughed away his apology, but he felt this slight contact as something tender, exquisite. As he opened the door he could only mutter an embarrassed good-evening.

"Thank you for coming out in the rain," she said, "and you mustn't take cold or I shall think you ought not to have risked it."

"I'm tough." He moved out onto the stair. Wasn't she going to ask him to come again? "By the way," he called out, "I've read Sherlock Holmes. It's great!"

"I'm glad you liked it," she replied, "and I'll try to find another good story for you next Saturday evening."

He went away rapturously happy in having won the chance to know so beautiful a southern girl. Whether she lived as a worker in a tenement or as a companion in an old family mansion, she was the most refined person he had ever met and he planned great days when they should be together. The rain fell unheeded. Despite the bright light from the electric lamp, he walked into a deep puddle, drenching his feet and ankles and splashing his best clothes with dirty water. Oblivious of such trivial happenings, dreaming of the future, counting the evenings to Saturday night, he reached his home, where, lying down to sleep, the lady of his heart followed him in his dreams.

Hertha, as she washed the cups and tidied up the kitchen, was happy, too, for a time, recollecting with pleasurable excitement the look of admiration in her visitor's eyes. But shortly her cheeks grew hot with anger at him and at herself. He had insulted the colored people, "her people," as she had so recently called them, and she had said no word of protest. If she could not talk, she argued to herself, she could refuse to see this young man again. It was men like this who stole the Negro's crops, who kept their children in ignorance, who even broke down jail doors and lynched black prisoners. Why had she ever allowed herself to be kind to such a man? Then as she looked about her, as she seemed to see Dick in the chair by the table, she smiled a little. Probably it was foolish to get so excited on the matter. Mammy's last instructions were not to try to stand in two worlds, and if the white world showed more indifference, more antagonism to the black than even she had expected, she was in it and it was as well to know it as it was. In her loneliness she taught herself to believe that she had a right to become acquainted with this southern youth, but she resolved firmly not to let him have the conversation all to himself if he should again broach the Negro question. However bashful she might be, it should be possible for her to utter some forceful word.