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 that a-way, 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 have n’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 dat a-way.  What you mean?  Whaih you think Gawd is?”