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About a month after the Fingal girls entered school, the project of a picnic took form among the girls of the Fifth A grade.  One of them had an uncle who lived three or four miles from town on a farm which was passed by the inter-urban trolley line, and he had sent word that the children could, if they liked, picnic in his maple woods, which overhung the brown waters of the Piquota river.  There was to be no recess that day in Five A, and the grade was to be dismissed half an hour earlier than usual, so that the girls could go out on the trolley in time to get the supper ready.  The farmer was to bring them back by moonlight in his hay-wagon.

The prospect seemed ideal.  Five A hummed with excitement and importance as the various provisions were allotted to the different girls and the plans talked over.  Sylvia was to bring bananas enough for the crowd; one of the German-American girls, whose father kept a grocery-store, promised pickles and olives; three or four together were to make the sandwiches, and Camilla Fingal was to bring along a big bag of the famous rich and be-raisined cookies that lived in the “cookie-jah.”  Sylvia, who always enjoyed prodigiously both in anticipation and in reality any social event, could scarcely contain herself as the time drew near with every prospect of fair weather.

The morning of the day was clear and fine, a perfect example of early spring, with silvery pearls showing on the tips of the red-twig osiers, and pussy-willows gleaming gray along the margins of swampy places.  Sylvia and Judith felt themselves one with this upward surge of new life.  They ran to school together, laughing aloud for no reason, racing and skipping like a couple of spring lambs, their minds and hearts as crystal-clear of any shadow as the pale-blue, smiling sky above them.  The rising sap beat in their young bodies as well as in the beech-trees through which they scampered, whirling their school-books at the end of their straps, and shouting aloud to hear the squirrel’s petulant, chattering answer.

When they came within sight and hearing of the schoolhouse, their practised ears detected (although with no hint of foreboding) that something unusual had happened.  The children were not running about and screaming, but standing with their heads close together, talking, and talking, and talking.  As Judith and Sylvia came near, several ran to meet them, hurling out at them like a hard-flung stone:  “Say—­what d’ye think?  Those Fingal girls are niggers!”

To the end of her life, Sylvia would never forget the rending shock of disillusion brought her by these blunt words.  She did not dream of disbelieving them, or of underestimating their significance.  A thousand confirmatory details leaped into her mind:  the rich, sweet voices—­the dramatic ability—­the banjo—­the deprecatory air of timidity—­the self-conscious unwillingness to take the leading position to which their talents and beauty gave them a right.  Yes, of course it was true!  In the space of a heartbeat, all her romantic Italian imaginings vanished.  She continued to walk forward mechanically, in an utter confusion of mind.